Women and children made up most of the dead in an attack on Rafah, according to officials. Source: Cesar Jung-Harada, Flickr.
Israeli strikes targeting designated safe zones in Rafah has killed at least 35 Palestinians and wounded a dozen more, hours after Hamas launched rockets at Tel Aviv on Sunday.
Most of the dead and injured victims consisted of women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Palestinian officials reported that the attack on Tal as-Sultan neighborhood came as Israel attacked and bombed other shelters housing thousands of displaced Palestinians, including Nuseriat, Jabalia, and Gaza City.
Rafah is known as a so-called “safe zone” as Israeli forces crammed more than 1.4 million displaced Palestinians at the beginning of the war in October.
Footage from the scene spread across social media, showing fire raging causing heavy destruction.
The IDF claimed it struck a Hamas compound area with “precise ammunition and on the basis of precise intelligence”, killing two senior officials, including Hamas’ chief staff in the West Bank, Yassin Rabia.
The IDF admitted that they were “aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed”.
A spokesperson with the Palestinian Red Cresent Society (PRCS) said the death toll was likely to rise as search and rescue efforts continued in the neighborhood.
PRCS asserted that the location had been designated as a “humanitarian area”.
PRCS also told Wafa news agency that hospitals in the area were “incapable of handling this large number of victims as a result of the occupation’s [Israel] deliberate destruction of the health system in Gaza”.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri described the attack in Rafah as a “massacre”, and condemned the United States for their part in providing military and financial aid to Israel that made this attack, and many other previous attacks, possible.
“The air strikes burnt the tents, the tents are melting, and the people’s bodies are also melting,” described a resident in Rafah.
The attack came hours after Hamas launched a barrage of rockets, setting off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv for the first time since January.
Several of the rockets were intercepted with few in Israel with minor injuries.
Hamas’ military wing announced on its Telegram channel that the rockets launched were in response to “Zionist massacres against civilians”.
Earlier this month, Israel rejected a ceasefire proposal that would see a hostage exchange in return for the removal of Israeli forces from Gaza before launching air strikes on Rafah.
The strike also comes two days after the Internation Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to stop any military action in Rafah.
“Israeli authorities are completely disregarding the binding, provisional measure issued by the ICJ,” said Triestino Mariniello, a lawyer with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCGR).
“The urgent action by the international community should be an immediate session by the Security Council. This should have happened already.”
Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 35,984 people and wounded 80,643 since 7 October.
