Two days after the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered Israel to immediately stop its offensive in Rafah, an aerial bombardment has caused massacre there, in a camp for displaced people. The attack caused a fire that spread through the precarious constructions of sheet metal, plastic or fabric until it ended the lives of at least 50 people, including several babies and other minors, according to the balance provided this Monday by the Ministry of Health of the Hamas government in the Strip, once the fire was extinguished and the bodies recovered. The Israeli army is “reviewing” whether the “precise” targeted assassination in which it killed two local commanders of the armed wing of Hamas in this camp (Tel Al Sultan) also caused civilian casualties. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, it was one of the areas designated by Israel as “humanitarian” and therefore safe.
Apparently, many died from burns or asphyxiation from the smoke. The images recorded by journalists and local residents show the discovery of charred bodies, including babies and adolescents, while a fire consumes part of the camp. From dawn you can see the remains of charred shanties, people mourning their loved ones or bodies wrapped or shown to the press. There are also dozens of injured, mostly children and women, according to the Ministry.
One of the witnesses interviewed by the media, Muhamad Ahmed Abu Sibah, said that he had been in the camp for five months and until then he felt relatively safe. Until this Sunday, when he was in his tent “among [las oraciones] Maghrib and Isha,” late in the afternoon, and heard an explosion. Then another. “There were at least two missiles. The fire began to come in this direction. There were burned cars, martyrs [muertos]…”, he explained.
Israel carried out the bombing shortly after Hamas – the Islamist movement still fighting in parts of Gaza and responsible for the mass attack on October 7 – made a show of force with its first barrage of rockets in four months against the Tel Aviv region. . He thus expressed how eight months of invasion have not nullified their ability to reach important and distant cities. Since the Hague court order, the Israeli army has not reduced the intensity of its offensive in Rafah, and continues to bomb other parts of the Strip.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, Tel Al Sultan was not among the areas that it had ordered to evacuate within the framework of the offensive that began on the 6th in Rafah and in which it is giving partial abandonment orders. These orders, and the general fear of the population of a large-scale land invasion, have already led the majority of Gazans who had been gathering there for months to leave Rafah, in search of a last refuge from the advance of the army in the north and after arriving at the nearby city of Khan Yunis. It was estimated that there were around 1.4 million people. The United Nations estimates that 900,000 have already left by force, some of them towards Al Mawasi, the “extended humanitarian zone” designated by Israel and whose conditions worry international and non-governmental organizations.
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The massacre has motivated small demonstrations at dawn in various parts of the West Bank and has led Hamas to call this Monday for an “escalation in public activities of anger and pressure to stop the aggression and genocidal war.” “This massacre exceeds all limits and requires urgent intervention,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
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