Israeli airstrike kills 35 in Rafah after Hamas launches rockets at Tel Aviv

Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
·5-min read

At least 35 people have been killed after an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah hit tents housing displaced people, Palestinian medics have said, hours after Hamas launched a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv for the first time in months.

Footage from the scene showed widespread destruction at the camp with a large fire overtaking the area. The Israeli military said its air force struck a Hamas compound and that the attack was carried out with “precise ammunition and on the basis of precise intelligence”.

Israel has pressed ahead with an offensive on the southernmost part of the strip despite an order from the UN’s top court on Friday to halt the assault, which it said was worsening an already “disastrous” humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.

A spokesperson from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the death toll was likely to rise as search and rescue efforts continued in Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood about 1.2 miles (2km) north-west of the city centre.

“Currently, numerous individuals remain trapped under the flames and in the tents destroyed by the bombardment,” they said. The group added that the location of the strike had been designated by Israel as a humanitarian area, adding: “Citizens were coerced into evacuating to it.”

The Red Cross said its field hospital in Rafah was receiving an influx of casualties, and that other hospitals also were taking in a large number of patients.

Israel has repeatedly said a ground operation in Rafah, where it believes Hamas’s leadership and four battalions of fighters are camped out using Israeli hostages as human shields, is necessary to achieve “total victory” over the group.

More than half of the Palestinian territory’s 2.3 million population had sought shelter in the Rafah area over nearly nine months of fighting, and about 1 million people have been forced to flee again since Israel began moving into the southern and eastern edges of the city earlier this month. Desperately needed aid deliveries have ground to a halt, as the Rafah border crossing, and the nearby Kerem Shalom, a goods crossing connecting Gaza with Israel, are in effect blocked by the fierce fighting.

About 200 aid trucks were supposed to enter Gaza through Kerem Shalom on Sunday after an agreement was reached with Egypt, although it remained unclear whether relief agencies would be able to reach it.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday’s strike on Rafah had taken out Hamas’s chief of staff for the West Bank and another senior official behind deadly attacks on Israelis, adding it was “aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.”

The deadly attack came hours after air raid sirens had sounded in Tel Aviv and across central Israel for the first time since January after what the IDF said was a salvo of eight rockets were fired from the Rafah area. Hamas’s ability to fire rockets and drones towards Israeli territory has steadily diminished over eight months of war, but Sunday’s barrage appeared intended to show that the group’s command and operational infrastructure was still intact.

Most of the rockets were intercepted, though there were reports that two women suffered minor injuries on their way to a shelter. Several flights from Ben Gurion airport were delayed or cancelled.

In a statement on its Telegram channel, Hamas’s military wing said the rockets were launched in response to “Zionist massacres against civilians”. At least five Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Rafah earlier on Sunday, first responders said.

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, responded to the attack with a post on X that said: “Rafah! With full force!”

Related: UN’s top court orders Israel to immediately halt Rafah offensive

Also on Sunday, the IDF denied that an Israeli soldier had been abducted by Hamas, after unverified video footage published by the militant group on Saturday appeared to show Palestinian fighters dragging an unconscious soldier through a tunnel.

Residents in Jabaliya in northern Gaza also reported ground fighting earlier on Sunday. In recent months, Hamas has been able to regroup and launch attacks across northern and central areas of the territory that are supposedly under Israeli control.

Israel’s long-threatened plan to attack the border town had drawn intense opposition from even the country’s staunchest allies, such as the US, although Washington has noticeably blurred its red lines since the operation began.

About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Hamas’s surprise assault on 7 October, with a further 250 taken hostage. Almost 36,000 people have been killed in the ensuing war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Several attempts at brokering a new truce, after a week-long cessation of hostilities in November, have foundered. The last round of talks, mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar, quickly drew to a stalemate after Israel launched its Rafah operation.

US intelligence officials met Israeli and Qatari delegations in Paris on Friday in an attempt to get negotiations back on track. However, Hamas downplayed reports of tentative progress, telling Reuters on Sunday that the group had not received anything from the mediators on new dates for the resumption of talks, as Israeli media had reported.

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