At least 25 dead in Israeli attacks near Rafah, Gaza officials report

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces shelled tent camps for displaced Palestinians outside The southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip According to the territory’s health authorities and rescue workers, at least 25 people were killed and 50 others were injured on Friday.

This was the latest deadly attack in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands have fled fighting between Israel and HamasIt happened less than a month after an Israeli bombing raid that a deadly fire The attack struck a camp for displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip and sparked widespread outrage around the world – including among some of Israel’s closest allies – over the expansion of the military offensive to Rafah.

Witnesses whose relatives were killed in one of the bombings near a Red Cross field hospital north of Rafah told the Associated Press that Israeli forces fired a second volley, killing people who had emerged from their tents.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said the hospital was overwhelmed with casualties, including 22 dead and 45 injured, and condemned the firing of “large-caliber projectiles” a few meters from the facility. Hundreds of people are living in tents nearby, including many hospital staff, the ICRC said.

According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesman for the Civil Defense rescue team in Rafah, witnesses told rescuers about the shelling on Friday at two locations in a coastal area filled with makeshift tents. The Health Ministry in Gaza released the number of people killed and injured in the attacks.

The locations of the attacks, given by the Civil Defense and the Red Cross hospital, appear to be just outside an Israeli-designated security zone on the Mediterranean coast known as Muwasi. The Israeli military said the incident was under investigation but there was “no indication that the IDF” carried out an attack inside the security zone, using an acronym for Israel Defense Forces. It gave no details of the incident or what targets might have been intended.

Israel has previously bombed locations near the “humanitarian zone” in Muwasi, a rural area without water and sewage systems, where displaced Palestinians have set up tent camps in the last few months.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure and is trying to minimize civilian casualties. Israel blames the high civilian casualties on militants, claiming they operate among the population.

With Israel’s war against Hamas In the ninth month, international criticism of the campaign by systematic destruction in the Gaza Stripwith enormous loss of civilian life. The United Nations’ highest court concluded that there was a “plausible risk” Genocide” in Gaza – an accusation that Israel firmly rejects.

The attack near the Red Cross Hospital began with an ammunition that produced only a loud bang and a bright flash, said Mona Ashour, who lost her husband while investigating what had happened.

“We were in our tent when they set off a ‘sound bomb’ near the Red Cross tents. At the first sound, my husband came out,” said Ashour, holding back tears as she held a little girl in her arms outside Nasser Hospital in nearby Khan Younis.

“And then they hit the second one, which was a little closer to the Red Cross entrance,” she said.

Hasan al-Najjar said his sons were killed while helping people who panicked after the first attack.

“My two sons left after hearing the screams of the women and children,” he said at the hospital. “They went to save the women and they hit with the second bullet and my sons became martyrs. They hit the place twice.”

The location of the hospital is known to all parties to the conflict and is marked with the Red Cross emblem, the ICRC said on Friday. The 60-bed field hospital opened in mid-May to provide emergency surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics and outpatient care, according to a press release at the time, which shows white tents covering an area the size of a football field.

Israel is pushing its Invasion of Rafahwhere more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. Most have now fled the city, but the United Nations says nowhere in Gaza is safe and the humanitarian situation is dire, with families living in tents and cramped housing without adequate food, water or medical care.

Elsewhere, civil defense teams in the northern Gaza Strip recovered the bodies of five people killed in an airstrike on two apartments in Gaza City. Several others were injured. An airstrike earlier on Friday hit a municipal garage in the city, killing five people.

Fadel Naeem, the orthopedic chief at Al-Ahli Hospital, said the bodies of 30 people were brought there on Friday, calling it “a difficult and brutal day in Gaza City.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli army announced on Friday that two soldiers had been killed in fighting in central Gaza. No information was given about the circumstances of the deaths of the two men, both in their twenties. Three other Israeli soldiers were seriously injured, the army said.

Israeli ground offensives and bombings have killed more than 37,400 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Healthwhich does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Israel started the war after The Hamas attack of October 7in which militants entered southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and kidnapping about 250.

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Associated Press writers Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, and Drew Callister in New York contributed to this report.