Israeli bombing of Rafah ‘safe zone’ kills at least 45 Palestinians

At least 45 Palestinians, mostly displaced women and children, were killed Sunday when a barbaric Israeli bombardment targeted a Rafah tent camp for displaced people. The Gazan Health Ministry said in a statement that the strikes “claimed the lives of 45 martyrs and left dozens injured, most of them children and women,” while the Israeli army claimed it had targeted Hamas members.

The media office in Gaza earlier said the attack hit a center run by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in Tal al-Sultan near Rafah, branding it a “horrific massacre.”

Israeli aircraft targeted several tents in the area, the media office said, adding that missiles and 2,000-pound bombs were used.

Earlier, Gaza’s civil defense force said it transported 50 people, including dead and injured, after the bombing. The targeted area sheltered at least 100,000 displaced people, it said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society in a brief statement said its ambulance crews were moving the victims to nearby medical centers.

The attack led to fires engulfing the area some of which are still raging, according to witnesses.

“We retrieved a large number of child martyrs from the Israeli bombardment, including a child without a head and children whose bodies have turned into fragments,” a Palestinian paramedic told Anadolu.”The Rafah massacre is a clear message from Israel to the ICJ and the international community that attacks against civilians in Gaza continue,” said the media office in its statement, referring to the International Court of Justice.

The office further noted that at least 190 Palestinians had been killed and injured in the last 24 hours due to the Israeli army’s targeting of more than 10 shelters for displaced people in the Gaza Strip.

The army had previously identified the camp it bombed in Rafah as being “within the safe zones where displaced people were urged to head.”

The Israeli army admitted late Sunday that there were civilian casualties in the attack it launched on Rafah.

Following the massacre, Israeli warplanes bombed two homes in the city, resulting in five fatalities and multiple injuries.

This raised the death toll from Israeli airstrikes on Rafah Sunday evening to 45, with dozens more injured, according to Palestinian medical sources.

The Palestinian resistance group Hamas condemned the bombing.

“The horrific massacre committed by Israel in Rafah a short while ago is a blatant challenge, complete disregard, and defiance of the ICJ’s decision, which demanded it to stop its aggression on Rafah,” it said.

“In a horrifying war crime, the criminal Zionist occupation army committed a heinous massacre against displaced citizens in tents this evening in an area crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people that was declared safe.”

By Daily Sabah with Agencies