JERUSALEM >> An Israeli strike on an area in the Gaza Strip home to Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war killed at least 40 people and wounded 60 others, authorities said Tuesday.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported the toll for the strike, citing medical officials, and suggested the figures could change.

Details about the strike in the Mawasi coastal community just west of Khan Younis that the Israeli military has designated as a humanitarian zone remained unclear. The area is home to many Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war in which the Israeli military has devastated the wider Gaza Strip after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The Israeli military described the strike as hitting “significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command-and-control center,” without providing additional evidence.

Hamas in a reported statement denied that, though Israel long has accused Hamas and other militants of hiding in civilian populations. Israel has launched strikes in and around Mawasi in the past, even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now live there.

Deep craters

Footage circulating on social media showed deep craters at the site of the attack, the strewn ruins around it covered in shredded tents, a bicycle and other debris. Rescue workers used shovels to shift through the sand. Bystanders used their hands to dig, illuminated by mobile phone light. At least one crater at the site looked to be as deep as 32 feet.

The Israeli military said it used “precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional means” it did not immediately describe to limit civilian casualties.

Mawasi is an area less than a mile wide and 8.7 miles long. Palestinians who fled other areas have crowded into the sandy beach area against the Mediterranean Sea after Israel told them it would be safe. However, aid groups have struggled to provide care there among a sea of tents crowded with the belongings families were able to carry away with them when fleeing their homes.

The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.

Victims of the attack were being taken to two nearby medical facilities. One of them, the Muwasi field hospital, known locally as the British hospital, was built this year after the World Health Organization sought assistance with the medical crisis in Gaza. It was constructed using timber from destroyed buildings, sheeting from UNICEF and salvaged medical equipment, according to UK-Med, the British health organization responsible for the hospital.

In the Israeli strike in July on Muwasi, Gaza health officials said more than 90 people were killed, about half of them women and children, and about 300 injured. The scene then was not very different from the one there early Tuesday — a huge crater had replaced the encampments, and people were searching for family members among the dead.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their Oct. 7 attack. They abducted another 250 and are still holding around 100 after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire last November. Around a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.

Aid convey detained

Meanwhile, the United Nations agency in charge of aid for displaced Palestinians said the Israeli military stopped a convoy for more than eight hours on Monday, despite it coordinating with the troops.

The agency’s head Philippe Lazzarini said the staffers who were held had been trying to work on a polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza and Gaza City.

“The convoy was stopped at gun point just after the Wadi Gaza checkpoint with threats to detain UN staff,” he wrote on the social platform X. “Heavy damage was caused by bulldozers to the UN armoured vehicles.”

He said the staff and the convoy later returned to a U.N. base but it was unclear if a polio vaccination campaign would take place Tuesday in northern Gaza.

“UN Staff must be allowed to undertake their duties in safety + be protected at all times in accordance with international humanitarian law, he wrote. “Gaza is no different.”

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.

The vaccination drive, launched after doctors discovered the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children during a war that has destroyed the health care system.

U.N. chief decries level of destruction

The U.N. chief said Monday that the United Nations has offered to monitor any cease-fire in Gaza and demanded an end to the worst death and destruction he has seen in his more than seven-year tenure.

Secretary-General António Guterres said in an interview with The Associated Press that it’s “unrealistic” to think the U.N. could play a role in Gaza’s future, either by administering the territory or providing a peacekeeping force, because Israel is unlikely to accept a U.N. role.

But he said “the U.N. will be available to support any cease-fire.” The United Nations has had a military monitoring mission in the Middle East, known as UNTSO, since 1948, and “from our side, this was one of the hypotheses that we’ve put on the table,” he said.

“Of course, we’ll be ready to do whatever the international community asked for us,” Guterres said. “The question is whether the parties would accept it, and in particular whether Israel would accept it.”

Israel’s military assault on Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, has stretched for 11 months, with recent cease-fire talks failing to reach a breakthrough and violence in the West Bank reaching new highs.

Stressing the urgency of a cease-fire now, Guterres said: “The level of suffering we are witnessing in Gaza is unprecedented in my mandate as secretary-general of the United Nations. I’ve never seen such a level of death and destruction as we are seeing in Gaza in the last few months.”

This report contains information from the New York Times.