At least 45 people have been killed, including women and children, in an Israeli air strike on a camp for displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the Hamas-run health ministry says. Videos from the scene in the Tal al-Sultan area on Sunday night showed a large explosion and intense fires burning.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had killed two “senior Hamas terrorists” and that it was “investigating the circumstances of the deaths of civilians in the area”. Hours earlier, Hamas had fired eight rockets from Rafah towards Tel Aviv – the first long-range attacks on the central Israeli city since January. Some 800,000 people have fled Rafah since the start of an Israeli ground operation there three weeks ago, but hundreds of thousands are still believed to be sheltering there.
In a separate development on Monday, Egypt’s military said it was investigating a shooting near the border with Gaza, just south of Rafah, in which a member of the Egyptian security forces was killed. The IDF, whose forces have seized control of the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing, said it was discussing a shooting incident with Egyptian authorities.The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday’s air strike targeted tents for displaced people near a UN facility in Tal al-Sultan, about 2km (1.2 miles) north-west of the centre of Rafah.
Graphic footage showed a number of structures ablaze next to a banner saying “Kuwaiti Peace Camp ‘1’”, as well as first responders and bystanders carrying several bodies. We were sitting at the door of the house safely. Suddenly we heard the sound of a missile,” witness Fadi Dukhan told Reuters news agency. We ran and found the street covered in smoke,” he said, adding that he and others saw a girl and a young man who had been killed by the blast. Abed Mohammed al-Attar said his brother and sister-in-law were killed, leaving their children as orphans.
The [Israeli] army is a liar. There is no security in Gaza. There is no security, not for a child, an elderly man, or a woman,” he said. The IDF said in a statement on Monday afternoon that Israel’s Military Advocate General, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi – who is charged with making sure the military acts in accordance with the law – had ordered an investigation into the incident.
Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircraft had “conducted an intelligence-based strike in the area of Rafah against significant terror targets in the area of Rafah” on Sunday, it said. The IDF identified them as Yassin Rabia, the chief of staff of the armed group’s fighters in the occupied West Bank, and Khaled Nagar, another senior official in the West Bank wing, who it accused of directing and carrying out deadly attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
“Before the strike, a number of steps were taken to reduce the risk of harming uninvolved civilians during the strike, including conducting aerial surveillance, the deployment of precise munitions by the IAF, and additional intelligence information,” the statement added. Based on these measures, it was assessed that there would be no expected harm to uninvolved civilians… The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians during combat.”
Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman told the BBC: “It appears from initial reports that somehow a fire broke out, and that sadly took the lives of others. In a speech on Monday morning, Maj Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi described the incident in Rafah as “very difficult”.
Source: eNCA
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