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An Israeli airstrike on a makeshift tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah, Gaza, killed at least 45 people and injured 249 on Sunday evening, Gaza's Health Ministry said on Monday. The Israeli military said the attack targeted a Hamas compound.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it was investigating reports that “several civilians in the area had suffered harm” from the airstrike and a subsequent fire. A follow-up statement said two Hamas leaders had been killed in the attack.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its ambulance crews had taken a “large” number of victims to the Tal as Sultan clinic and field hospitals in Rafah, where few functioning hospitals remain, and that “numerous” people were trapped in fires nearby . location of the strikes.
The attack hit the Tal as Sultan area of Rafah, within what the Israeli military has designated as a humanitarian zone, where it had ordered Palestinian civilians to take shelter ahead of the ground offensive in Rafah, the Red Crescent said.
Israel's attack on Rafah, Gaza's southernmost city, has come under intense scrutiny, especially after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel on Friday to “immediately” halt its military offensive there. Although the court has few effective tools to implement its order, it is putting more pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to curb attacks in Gaza and reduce civilian casualties.
Bilal al-Sapti, 30, a construction worker in Rafah, said shrapnel from the strike tore apart the tent where he was staying with his wife and two children, but his family was unharmed.
“What kind of tent will protect us from rockets and shrapnel?” he said.
Mr al-Sapti said he saw charred bodies and people screaming at the scene of the attack as firefighters tried to extinguish the flames. “The fire was very intense and spread throughout the camp,” he said. “There was darkness and no electricity.”
Doctors Without Borders said more than 15 people killed and dozens injured in the attack in Rafah were taken to a trauma stabilization center it supports in Tal as Sultan.
Dr. James Smith, a British Rafah emergency response specialist who has worked at that center, said the attack had killed displaced people who were “seeking a degree of refuge and shelter in tarpaulin tents.”
Speaking from a home a few miles away from the trauma center, a distance he said had become too dangerous to cross, Dr. Smith said the images shared by his colleagues at the trauma center of injuries from the strike and fire were “truly some of the worst I have ever seen.”
Although the United Nations estimates that more than 800,000 people fled Rafah within a few weeks after the Israeli army announced its offensive, the area remains densely populated, Dr. Smith.
“These are very, very tightly packed tents,” he said. “And a fire like this can spread over an enormous distance in a very short time with catastrophic consequences.”
The attack was “one of the most horrific things I have seen or heard in all the weeks I have worked in Gaza,” he added.
Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Israeli army's top legal official, said on Monday that the airstrike was under review. She said military police had opened about 70 criminal investigations into possible misconduct during the war.
“Of course, in a war of such scale and intensity, complex incidents also occur,” General Tomer-Yerushalmi said in a speech to the Israeli Bar Association. “Some incidents, like last night's incident in Rafah, are very serious.” She added that the military “deplores the harm caused to uninvolved civilians during the war.”
Reporting was contributed by Patrick Kingsley, Johnatan Reiss, She is Abuheweila And Aaron Bokserman.