In a new massacre, at least 40 civilians were killed and others were injured, mostly children and women, in the Israeli occupation’s bombardment of the tents of displaced people northwest of the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Red Crescent said the strikes were carried out over displaced persons’ tents near the United Nations headquarters northwest of Rafah, asserting that the location was designated as a humanitarian zone by Israel. A spokesperson for the organization said the death toll was likely to rise, most of the casualties were women and children.
The Israeli occupation army said it had “struck a Hamas compound in the Tel Sultan area of northwestern Rafah”, adding in a statement that “the attack was carried out in accordance with international law.”
WAFA reported that at least 40 citizens were killed and others were injured after the occupation forces targeted, with at least eight missiles, the tents of people sheltering in a displacement camp that was recently established near the warehouses of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), northwest of Rafah.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported that its crews transported a large number of bodies and injured after the occupation targeted the tents of the displaced in Rafah. PRCS warned that hospitals are incapable of handling this large number of victims as a result of the occupation’s deliberate destruction of the health system in Gaza, noting that some of the victims were transported to makeshift medical centers. PRCS confirmed that the people who were inside the tents, mostly children and women, were burnt alive.
According the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the war which began on the seventh of October last year, killing 35,984 people, the majority of whom were children and women, and injuring 80,643 others. Thousands of victims remain missing under the rubble or scattered on the roads.
MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash) denounced Monday the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for its “madness and vindictiveness” in the wake of the latest attack on Rafah. “Dozens killed and wounded in the last hours in Rafah. This time the bombings fell in a dense area of displaced residents that Israel declared a safe area. We were warned that entering Rafah would lead to another heavy humanitarian disaster,” she said in a post on X. “The clear demands of the International Criminal Court of Justice that Israel stop any attacks that would harm an innocent civilian population is being trampled on,” she added. “This bloody government refuses to obey all orders of the tribunal, and is taking the madness and vindictiveness to a new criminal level.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territory, described Israel’s attack on the tent camp in Rafah as “more horror.” “This cruelty, along with blatant defiance of the int’l law and system, is unacceptable,” she said in a post on X. “Israel must face sanctions, justice, suspension of agreements, trade, partnership and investments, as well as participation in int’l forums.”
According Al Jazeera, hundreds of Palestinians have taken to the streets in the occupied West Bank and in the Baqa’a refugee camp in Jordan to protest Israel’s latest attack on a camp for displaced people in Rafah. The protests in the West Bank took place in the cities of Jenin, Ramallah and Tulkarem, the Wafa news agency reported.
Nour Odeh, a Palestinian political analyst and commentator, told Al Jazeera that Israel’s latest attack on an “area full of tents made of highly flammable material” in Rafah, comes as people in Gaza are “completely spent” after months struggling to find food, water and shelter. “They know that there’s no place that is safe. They know that there are no hospitals that they can … rely on for life-saving treatment, given all the systematic assaults on hospitals,” said Odeh.
“The health infrastructure has been decimated and that’s exactly why the International Court of Justice felt compelled to issue a third set of orders, as we saw on Friday,” she added. While Odeh said governments were likely to issue statements condemning the attack on Rafah on Sunday night, she said “we have to wait and see what the United States will allow at the UN Security Council.” Odeh added that financial consequences, including arms embargoes and economic sanctions, could be the only way to break the cycle of Israeli attacks.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31871
