As international condemnation mounted, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the killing of dozens of people a day earlier at a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah was “a tragic accident” but gave no sign of curbing Israel's offensive in the country. Palestinian Territories. southern Gaza City.
The deadly fire that ripped through the compound on Sunday after an airstrike came at a particularly delicate moment for Israel, just days after the International Court of Justice appeared to order the country's army to halt its offensive in Rafah and as diplomats sought to to resume negotiations. for a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
The Israeli military said the target of Sunday's attack in Rafah was a Hamas compound, and that “precise ammunition” had been used to attack a commander and another senior militant official there.
But Gaza's health ministry said at least 45 people, including children, were killed by the blast and the fires it sparked. The ministry said 249 people were injured.
In a speech to Israel's parliament on Monday, Mr Netanyahu said the military had tried to protect non-combatants by issuing evacuation orders. He added that about a million civilians had left Rafah before or during the offensive. “Despite our best efforts not to harm uninvolved civilians,” he said, “we regret that a tragic accident occurred last night.”
He accused Hamas of hiding among the general population, saying: “For us, every uninvolved civilian who is injured is a tragedy. For Hamas it is a strategy. That's the whole difference.”
When images of the dead and maimed appeared on screens around the world, the condemnation was immediate. The latest slur appeared likely to make it even harder for Israel to continue its campaign against Hamas in Rafah, the southern city where about a million displaced Gazans have fled.
On Monday, an Israeli ally, President Emmanuel Macron of France, said he was “outraged” by the Rafah airstrike and declared that these operations “must stop.” He called for “full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire.”
The Israeli government, which invaded the Gaza Strip after a Hamas-led attack from there killed some 1,200 people in Israel, says it has no choice but to enter Rafah if it wants to wipe out the militants. The city, Israelis say, is a stronghold from which Hamas fighters fired rockets deep into central Israel earlier on Sunday for the first time in months.
But with Rafah now hosting displaced Gazans forced into the city by previous fighting in the north, world leaders have warned of the dangers of a major military operation there.
Sunday's deaths appeared to be exactly what those urging Israel to proceed cautiously had worried.
Bilal al-Sapti, 30, a construction worker in Rafah, said he saw charred bodies in the camp's rubble and heard people screaming as firefighters tried to extinguish the flames. “The fire was very intense and spread throughout the camp,” he said.
Dr. Marwan al-Hams, who was at the Tal Al Sultan Health Center where many of the victims first arrived, said the majority of the dead and injured he had seen were women and children. “Many of the dead bodies were severely burned, had amputated limbs and were torn to pieces,” he said.
Hamas in a statement described the Israeli attack on Rafah as “a heinous war crime” and demanded the “immediate and urgent implementation” of the World Court ruling. The group made no reference to the Israeli military's claims that two Hamas officials were killed in the attack.
The Israeli military said it had taken a number of steps before the attack to reduce the risk of harm to civilians, including conducting aerial surveillance and using munitions characterized as accurate. “Based on these measures, it was assessed that there would be no expected harm to uninvolved citizens,” the report said.
But an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said Monday that an initial investigation by the military had concluded that the attack, or its shrapnel, may have unexpectedly released a flammable substance into the camp ignite. Eyewitnesses described intense fires in the aftermath of the strike.
Military drone footage of the attack, reviewed by The New York Times, showed the munition hitting an area with several large cabin-like structures and parked cars.
Two Israeli officials said the attack took place outside a designated humanitarian zone created to provide safe shelter for evacuees. The officials made a map showing that what it said was the location of the attack in relation to the zone.
The military identified the two targets of the attack as the commander of Hamas's leadership in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Yassin Rabi, and a senior official in the group's same wing, Khaled Nagar.
In an ambiguously worded order, the International Court of Justice, a branch of the United Nations that hears arguments regarding allegations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, called on Israel to immediately halt any actions in Rafah that “could affect the Palestinian people.” . group in Gaza living conditions that would lead in whole or in part to physical destruction.”
Israeli officials have argued that the 13-2 ruling allowed the country to continue fighting in Rafah because it would not lead to such genocidal circumstances. But some of Israel's allies don't see the order that way. Even before the latest civilian deaths, Germany's vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, said the Rafah offensive was “incompatible with international law.”
Late Sunday, Israel's war cabinet met to discuss ongoing efforts to broker a ceasefire that would lead to the freedom of hostages captured in the October 7 attacks, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the conversations.
Those are diplomats aimed at a restart According to three officials briefed on the process, negotiations will take place sometime in the next week. Preliminary discussions were taking place, officials said held this weekend in Paris.
Reporting was contributed by Wrong Yazbek, Abu Bakr Bashir, She is Abuheweila, Patrick Kingsley, Myra Noveck And Johnatan Reiss.