Israeli air strikes Rafah city in southern Gaza Saturday killed several civilians, including women and children, according to Palestinian state media, adding to fear in the region where more than a million displaced Palestinians are crammed into tents. and temporary shelter.
For weeks, Palestinians have preparations for an Israeli ground attack were announced in Rafah, the southernmost part of Gaza, where more than half of the strip’s 2.2 million residents have fled after being forced from their homes following more than six months of Israeli bombing and invasion on set.
According to Wafa news agency, the airstrikes targeted two family homes, killing 10 residents, and rockets and artillery also hit other parts of Rafah and the surrounding area.
The Israeli military would not immediately comment on the attacks. They said the goal of the Gaza offensive was to destroy Hamas, the armed group that has controlled the Gaza Strip for nearly two decades.
“It was like an earthquake,” Mohammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant sheltering with his family in a tent in the sprawling Rafah camp, said of the shaking caused by the strikes.
The first attack occurred just after midnight, shaking the ground and lighting up the night sky, he said, and the second attack occurred shortly after. “When we heard the strikes, we didn’t know what to do,” he said. “Everyone said the same thing, ‘Where can we go?’”
President Biden and other world leaders have urged Israel not to invade Rafah because that would make an already dire humanitarian crisis worse.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not heeded those calls and declared that a ground offensive is needed to “complete the elimination of Hamas’s battalions” and destroy its network of tunnels. this amount.
Saturday’s attacks raised fears among Palestinians in Rafah that an invasion could be imminent.
in one meeting Before the Security Council this week, Secretary-General António Guterres said that Israel’s military strike on Rafah would “exacerbate this humanitarian disaster.”
Rahaf Al-Madhoun, 17, was livestreaming on TikTok talking about living conditions in Rafah when the first airstrikes hit close by, she said. She stopped to collect herself before continuing. She then described the terror caused by the attacks and the constant noise of surveillance drones overhead.
“I swear we’re losing money,” she said. “It is fear that is killing us.”
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad Report contributions.
