GAZA CITY, Palestine

At least 40 Palestinians were killed and scores injured on Tuesday in Israeli attacks targeting displaced people in the Gaza Strip, according to local authorities.

The Health Ministry said 17 people lost their lives and 26 others were injured in an airstrike in Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

Al-Mawasi was designated by the Israeli army as a "humanitarian zone" for displaced Palestinians amid Tel Aviv's deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip.

Another 23 people were killed and 73 others injured in another strike on a UN-run school sheltering displaced people in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, the government media office said in a statement.

"The new massacres are the latest in the genocide being committed by the (Israeli) occupation army against our Palestinian people," it said.

It appealed to the international community, UN agencies, and international organizations to “pressure the occupation and Washington to halt the genocidal war in Gaza.”

There was no comment from the Israeli army on the attacks.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.

More than 38,700 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 89,000 injured, according to local health authorities.

Over nine months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala in Istanbul