DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike hit a crowded Palestinian tent camp early Tuesday in Gaza, killing at least 19 people and wounding 60, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted senior Hamas militants with precise munitions.

The strike occurred in Muwasi, a sprawl of camps along the coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians to seek shelter from the nearly year-old Israel- Hamas war.

Associated Press video showed three large craters. First responders dug with garden tools and bare hands, using mobile phone flashlights until the sun came up. They pulled body parts from the sand, including what appeared to be a human leg.

“We were told to go to Muwasi, to the safe area ... Look around you and see this safe place,” said Iyad Hamed Madi, who had been sheltering there.

“This is for my son,” he said, holding up a bag of diapers. “He’s 4 months old. Is he a fighter? There’s no humanity.”

Also Tuesday, the Israeli military said an American activist killed in the West Bank last week was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing a rebuke from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and her family.

Israel said a criminal investigation has been launched into the killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old activist from Seattle who also held Turkish citizenship and was taking part in a demonstration against settlements in the Palestinian territory.

Blinken condemned the “unprovoked and unjustified” fatal shooting when asked about the Israeli inquiry at a news conference in London, and said the U.S. would make clear to its ally that such actions are “not acceptable.”

“No one — no one — should be shot and killed for attending a protest,” he said. “Israeli security forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way they operate in the West Bank.”

In a statement, Eygi’s family in the U.S. said “we are deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional. The disregard shown for human life in the inquiry is appalling.”

Israel said its inquiry “found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by (Israeli army) fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot.” It expressed its “deepest regret” at her death.

International Solidarity Movement, the activist group Egyi was volunteering with, said it “entirely rejects” the Israeli statement and that the “shot was aimed directly at her.”

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll from the strike on the tent camp may rise as more bodies are recovered. The Civil Defense agency, composed of first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, earlier said 40 were killed. The Israeli military disputed that toll.

The ministry is also part of the Hamas-run government. Its figures are widely seen as reliable.

The Hamas government’s media office said in a statement that the toll discrepancies arose from different methods of counting the dead, saying the Health Ministry counts only bodies taken to hospitals while the Civil Defense also counts bodies that have not yet been retrieved.

The Israeli military said it struck Hamas militants in a command center embedded in the area. It identified three of the militants, calling them senior operatives who were directly involved in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that triggered the war and other recent attacks.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, said in a post on the social media platform X that the initial casualty reports did “not line up with the information available to the (Israeli army), the precise weapons used and the accuracy of the strike.”

Hamas in a statement denied that any militants were in the area and called the Israeli allegations a “blatant lie.”

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because the militants often operate in residential areas and are known to position tunnels, rocket launchers and other infrastructure near homes, schools and mosques.

International law allows for strikes on military targets in areas where civilians are present, provided the force used is proportionate to the military objective — something that is often disputed and would need to be settled in a court, which almost never happens.

The Israeli military on Tuesday released footage of a Gaza tunnel where it said six hostages were recently killed by Hamas. The video shows a low, narrow passageway with no bathroom and poor ventilation.

The discovery of the hostages’ bodies last month has sparked a mass outpouring of anger in Israel, and the new video could add to the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas to bring the remaining hostages home.

Hagari revealed the video in a nationally televised news conference after visiting the tunnel himself. He said the tunnel was reached by a shaft buried under a child’s bedroom in a home in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

In the video, a hunched-over Hagari describes the conditions in the narrow arched passageway as extremely humid and difficult to breathe. He showed bottles of urine, a bucket that appeared to have served as a makeshift toilet, a chess board and ammunition for an automatic rifle believed to have been used by the captors.