Israeli air strikes late Sunday on a tented camp near Rafah for displaced Gazans killed 45 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave.
Israel’s army said the strikes, hours after a rocket attack had targeted Tel Aviv, killed two senior Hamas operatives. Medical officials and aid agencies operating in Gaza said the majority of the casualties were women and children.
In scenes grimly familiar from a war in its eighth month, Palestinian families rushed to hospitals to prepare their dead for burial after the strike late on Sunday night set tents and rickety shelters ablaze.
“The whole world is witnessing Rafah getting burnt up by Israel and no one is doing anything to stop it,” Bassam, a Rafah resident, told Reuters via a chat app, of the strike in an area of western Rafah that had been designated a safe zone.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Monday that the death toll had risen to 40 from overnight Israeli strikes that set ablaze tents of displaced Palestinians
“We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs … We also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly,” Mohammad al-Mughayyir, a Gaza civil defence agency official told AFP.
Footage released by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society showed chaotic night-time scenes of paramedics in ambulances racing to the fiery attack site and evacuating the wounded, including children.
“We had just done with the evening prayers,” recalled one survivor, a Palestinian woman who declined to be named.
“Our children were asleep … suddenly we heard a loud sound and there was fire all around us. The children were screaming … the sound was terrifying.”
The ICRC said that one of its field hospitals was receiving an “influx of casualties seeking care for injuries and burns” and that “our teams are doing their best to save lives”.
AFP images after sunrise showed the charred remains of makeshift tents and vehicles as Palestinian families looked at the blackened destruction.
Israel’s army had said overnight that its aircraft had “struck a Hamas compound in Rafah”, killing Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, both senior officials for the Palestinian militant group in the occupied West Bank.
It added that it was “aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.”
Mughayyir said the rescue efforts were hampered by war damage and the impacts of Israel’s siege on the territory amid the over seven-months-old conflict.
“There is a fuel shortage … there are roads that have been destroyed, which hinders the movement of civil defence vehicles in these targeted areas,” he said. “There is also a shortage of water to extinguish fires.”
Meanwhile on Monday, there was an exchange of gunfire between Egyptian soldiers and the Israeli army at the Rafah border crossing, Israeli media reported.
Israeli Channel 14 stated that “Egyptian soldiers fired at Israeli soldiers at the Rafah crossing without causing any injuries.” However, it was reported that one Egyptian soldier was killed in the cross fire.
In response, Israeli forces fired shots, this development occurred amid “heightened tensions with Egypt and could have significant political repercussions,” the media noted.
World reacts:
The Turkish president said the Rafah attack exposed Israel’s true colours.
“Sunday’s attack on Rafah, which came after the International Court of Justice’s order, has exposed the treacherous and bloody nature of the terror state,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan told lawyers in Istanbul in a televised address, referring to Israel and the ICJ’s order to stop the bloodshed.
The president also lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying: “The embattled Netanyahu and his murderous network trying to extend grip on power by massacring people as they fail to defeat Palestinian resistance.”
French President Emmanuel Macron was the latest to voice outrage over the strikes and demanded an “immediate ceasefire.”
“These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians,” Macron said on X in English. “I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire.”
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said a ruling by the top UN court on Friday ordering Israel to stop attacks must be respected.
“International humanitarian law applies for all, also for Israel’s conduct of the war,” Baerbock said.
Italy
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said attacks against Palestinian civilians in Gaza can “no longer be justified.”
“There is an increasingly difficult situation, in which the Palestinian people are being squeezed without regard for the rights of innocent men, women and children who have nothing to do with Hamas and this can no longer be justified,” he told Italian TV SkyTG24.
Earlier, Egypt condemned the Israeli military’s “deliberate bombing of the tents of displaced people”, state media reported, describing it as a blatant violation of international law.
Saudi Arabia also condemned the Israeli attack and said the Rafah strike could hinder efforts to mediate a ceasefire and hostage exchange.
