Tank blasts leaves at least nine dead at Gaza shelter, UN agency says

At least nine people were killed and 75 others injured after Israeli tank rounds struck a UN shelter in Gaza and sparked a fire, according to the United Nations’ relief agency in the region.

Thomas White, the director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said two tank rounds struck the organization’s Khan Younis Training Center on Wednesday, where about 800 people were taking shelter.

Video circulating on social media shows Palestinians fleeing from the two-story shelter as the fire consumes the vocational school and billows black smoke into the sky.

“Buildings ablaze and mass casualties,” White wrote on X following the strike. “Safe access to and from the center has been denied for two days. People are trapped.”

White said that the medics from the UN and World Health Organization (WHO) have made it to shelter and confirmed at least nine dead as they work to clear the area.

He claimed this was just the latest incident where civilians have been caught in the middle of Israel and Hamas’ intense battle in Khan Younis in recent days.

“There has been fighting in and around this area for two days, and we’re in constant contact with the Israeli army who have been giving us assurances that people in protected facilities, such as a shelter with a UN flag, or a hospital, are safe,” White told CNN Wednesday.

“The reality is that lives have been taken in and around these facilities in the last couple of days… We do not get warning when strikes happen in and around these protected facilities,” he added.

The IDF has yet to comment on the blasts and fire at the UNRWA shelter. The Israeli military, however, acknowledged that its forces remain active in Khan Younis as they work on “dismantling Hamas’ military framework.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus condemned the attack on the training center “horrendous” and called on the civilian deaths in Khan Younis to cease.

US Deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel described the casualties at the shelter as “incredibly concerning” during a news briefing Wednesday.

“We deplore today’s attack on the UN’s Khan Younis training center,” Patel told reporters. “Civilians must be protected, and the protected nature of UN facilities must be respected.

“Humanitarian workers must be protected so that they can continue providing civilians with the life-saving humanitarian assistance that they need,” he added.

The strike at the shelter comes as the fighting in Khan Younis has also left thousands trapped inside the Nasser Hospital complex as Israel and Hamas battle around the medical facility.

Doctors Without Borders said its crew was trapped inside Nasser Hospital with about 850 patients and thousands of refugees because of the fighting.

Humanitarian groups also fear that the hospital itself will be hit after Israel issued orders for mass evacuations in the area as the IDF continues its advance in southern Gaza.

Nasser is one of only two hospitals in the south still capable of treating critically ill patients, according to Doctors Without Borders.

White told CNN that following the Israeli orders, “tens of thousands of people are on the road again” fleeing further south to the Egyptian border after nearly 2 million Gazans had already been displaced by the war.

With at least 210 Palestinians killed over the last 24 hours — and nearly 26,000 killed since the war began, according Gaza’ Health Ministry — White said there was little civilians could do to avoid being a casualty of the conflict.

“Nobody imagined the level of death, destruction and displacement that we’ve seen in the last three months,” he told the outlet.

With Post wires