Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday a deadly strike that hit a displacement camp in Gaza’s Rafah was a “tragic incident” which his government was “investigating”.
“In Rafah, we evacuated a million uninvolved residents, and despite our best efforts a tragic incident happened yesterday (Sunday),” Netanyahu told parliament, adding that “we are investigating the case and will draw the conclusions” after Gaza officials reported 45 dead as the Israeli strike caused a fire.
The Israeli military said Monday it had launched a probe into an air strike in Rafah that Gaza officials say resulted in the deaths of at least 45 Palestinian civilians.
The military’s Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi “directed the General Staff’s Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism to investigate the strike carried out in Rafah” late Sunday, the military said in a statement.
It added that “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 (air force), and additional intelligence information.”
Men cleared away the charred debris of shelters and children salvaged food in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah on Monday after an Israeli strike torched a camp for displaced Palestinians.
“People were not just injured or killed, but charred,” 24-year-old Mohammed Hamad told AFP in the aftermath of the strike that killed at least 45 people.
The death toll came from the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which also said that 249 people were wounded in the strike.
“My cousin’s daughter, a child no more than 13, was among the martyrs. She had no features at all because shrapnel tore off her face,” Hamad said.
Israel’s military said its aircraft “struck a Hamas compound in Rafah” on Sunday night, killing two senior officials for the Palestinian militant group in the occupied West Bank.
The strike caused a fire that blazed through the camp in the Rafah governorate’s Tal Al-Sultan area, reducing tents and shelters to ashes.
Footage released by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society showed chaotic nighttime scenes of ambulances racing to the attack site and evacuating the wounded, including children.
As Palestinians cleared the site on Monday, only blackened metal sheeting and charred planks remained, the tent shelters having been all but obliterated.
“When these rockets fall on a tower block there are dozens of martyrs, so what about when they are tents?” lamented a man called Hamad.
“When we heard the sound (of the explosion), the sky suddenly lit up,” displaced Palestinian Muhannad, an eyewitness, told AFP.
“We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs as a result of the use of (…) missiles that caused a massive fire,” the director of Gaza’s civil defence agency, Mohammad al-Mughayyir, said.
Israel has faced surging international criticism over its war with Hamas, with even some of its closest allies, particularly the United States, expressing outrage at civilian deaths. Israel asserts that it adheres to international law even as it faces scrutiny in the world’s top courts, one of which last week demanded that it halt its offensive in Rafah.
France, a close European ally of Israel, said it was “outraged” by the violence.
“These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians. I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire,” President Emmanuel Macron posted on X.
Rafah, the southernmost Gaza city on the border with Egypt, had been housing more than a million people — about half of Gaza’s population — displaced from other parts of the territory. Most have fled once again since Israel launched what it called a limited incursion there earlier this month. Hundreds of thousands are packed into squalid tent camps in and around the city.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel must destroy what he calls Hamas’ last remaining battalions in Rafah. The militant group on Sunday launched a barrage of rockets from the city toward heavily populated central Israel, setting off air raid sirens but causing no injuries.
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said that bombings like the one in Rafah will have long-standing repercussions for Israel.
“Israel with this choice is spreading hatred, rooting hatred that will involve their children and grandchildren. I would have preferred another decision,″ he told SKY TG24.
Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas in attempts to secure a cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas, said the strikes could “complicate” talks, Negotiations, which appear to be restarting, have faltered repeatedly over Hamas’ demand for a lasting truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, terms Israeli leaders have publicly rejected.
Neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, which made peace with Israel decades ago, also condemned the Rafah strikes. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry described the strike on Tel al-Sultan as a “new and blatant violation of the rules of humanitarian international law.” Jordan’s Foreign Ministry called it a “war crime.”
(with inputs from AFP and Associated Press)
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