An Israeli strike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza killed at least 19 people and wounded 60 early on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted senior Hamas militants with precise munitions.

The overnight strike hit Muwasi, a sprawl of crowded tent camps along the Gaza coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of civilians to seek shelter from the Israel-Hamas war.

Gaza’s health ministry said it confirmed that at least 19 people were killed in the strike, and that the toll may rise as more bodies are recovered. The Civil Defence, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, had earlier said 40 people were killed. The Israeli military disputed that toll.

The ministry is also part of the Hamas-run government but its figures are widely seen as generally reliable. It maintains detailed records and its tallies from previous wars have largely coincided with figures from independent researchers, the UN and even the Israeli military.

AP footage shows three large craters at the scene. First responders dug through the sand and rubble with garden tools and their 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. “He’s four months old. Is he a fighter? There’s no humanity.”

One of three hospitals that took in casualties from the strike, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said around two dozen bodies were brought in. An AP cameraman saw 10 bodies in the hospital’s morgue, including two children.

“We were sleeping, and suddenly it was like a tornado,” Samar Moamer said at the hospital, where she was being treated for injuries from the strike. She said one of her daughters was killed and the other was pulled alive from the rubble.

The Israeli military said it had struck Hamas militants in a command-and-control centre embedded in the area. It identified three of the militants, saying they were senior operatives who were directly involved in the October 7 attack and other recent attacks against Israel.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, disputed the initial reports of the number of casualties in a post on X, saying they “do not line up with the information available to the (Israeli army), the precise weapons used and the accuracy of the strike”.