Top news
An Israeli airstrike on a makeshift tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah in the Gaza Strip killed at least 45 people on Sunday evening and injured 249, Gaza’s health ministry said Monday. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a Hamas compound.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it was investigating reports that “several civilians in the area were injured” by the airstrike and subsequent fire. A later statement said the strike killed two Hamas leaders. An Army legal official said Monday that the strike was under review.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said its ambulance teams had transported a “large” number of victims to the Tal as Sultan clinic and field hospitals in Rafah, where few functioning hospitals remain, and that “many” people had been trapped in the center’s fires. place of strikes.
The strike hit the Tal as Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, in what the Israeli army designated as a humanitarian zone, where it had asked Palestinian civilians to take shelter before its ground offensive in Rafah, the Crescent said -Red.
Israel’s assault on Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town, has come under scrutiny, particularly after the International Court of Justice on Friday ordered Israel to “immediately” stop the offensive military there. Although the court has few effective means of enforcing its order, it is putting more pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to curb its attacks in Gaza and reduce civilian casualties.
Bilal al-Sapti, 30, a construction worker in Rafah, said shrapnel from the strike destroyed the tent where he was staying with his wife and two children, but his family was not injured .
“What kind of tent will protect us from missiles and shrapnel?” he said.
Mr. al-Sapti said that at the scene of the attack he saw charred bodies and people screaming as firefighters tried to put out the flames. “The fire was very intense and spread throughout the camp,” he said. “There was darkness and no electricity.”
Doctors Without Borders said more than 15 dead and dozens injured in the Rafah attack were transported to a trauma stabilization center it supports in Tal as Sultan.
Dr. James Smith, a British emergency specialist in Rafah who worked at the center, said the attack killed displaced people who were “seeking some refuge and shelter in tarpaulin tents.”
Speaking from a home a few miles from the trauma center, a distance he said had become too dangerous to cross, Dr. Smith said images shared by his trauma center colleagues showing injuries caused by the strike and fire were “really certain”. the worst I’ve seen.
Although the United Nations estimates that more than 800,000 people fled Rafah within weeks of the announcement of the Israeli military offensive, the area remains densely populated, Dr. Smith said.
“These are very, very tight tents,” he said. “And a fire like this could spread a very great distance, with catastrophic consequences in a very short time. »
The attack was “one of the most horrific things I have seen or heard in all the weeks I have worked in Gaza,” he added.
Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Israeli military’s top legal official, said Monday that the airstrike was being reviewed. She said military police had opened about 70 criminal investigations into possible misconduct during the war.
“Naturally, in a war of such scale and intensity, complex incidents also occur,” General Tomer-Yerushalmi said in a speech to the Israeli Bar Association. “Some incidents, like the one last night in Rafah, are very serious.” She added that the military “regrets any harm caused to civilians not involved during the war.”
The report was provided by Patrick Kingsley, John Reiss, Iyad Abuheweila And Aaron Boxerman.
