Amid growing international condemnation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the killing of dozens of people a day earlier at a camp for Palestinian displaced persons in Rafah was “a tragic accident” but stopped short of saying Israel would curb its offensive on southern Gaza cities.
The deadly fires sparked by the airstrikes that engulfed the Israeli camp on Sunday came at a particularly delicate moment for Israel, days after the International Court of Justice appeared to order the Israeli army to halt its offensive in Rafah and as diplomats worked to restart negotiations on a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The Israeli military said Sunday’s strike in Rafah targeted a Hamas compound and used “precision munitions” to strike a commander there and another senior militant official.
But the Gaza Health Ministry said the explosion and the fire it caused killed at least 45 people, including children, and that 249 people were injured.
Speaking in the Knesset on Monday, Netanyahu said the military had issued the evacuation order to try to protect noncombatants, adding that about a million civilians left Rafah before or during the offensive. “Despite our best efforts not to harm unrelated civilians,” he said, “a regrettable tragic accident occurred last night.”
He accused Hamas of hiding among the general population and said: “For us, every injury to an unrelated civilian is a tragedy. For Hamas, it is a strategy. That is the biggest difference.”
As images of the dead and wounded appeared on screens around the world, condemnation was immediate. The latest condemnation appeared to make it harder for Israel to continue its assault on Hamas in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza to which some 1 million displaced Gazans have fled.
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron, an Israeli ally, said he was “outraged” by the airstrikes on Rafah and declared they “must stop.” He called for “full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire.”
The Israeli government, which invaded the Gaza Strip after Hamas-led attacks killed about 1,200 people in Israel, said it had no choice but to enter Rafah if it wanted to eliminate the militants. Israelis say Rafah is a stronghold of Hamas militants, and early Sunday, Hamas militants fired rockets from the city deep into central Israel for the first time in months.
But because Rafah hosts displaced Gazans who were forced to move there by fighting in the north, world leaders have warned that a large-scale military operation there would be dangerous.
The deaths on Sunday seemed to be exactly what those urging Israel to proceed with caution feared.
Bilal al-Sapti, 30, a construction worker in Rafah, said he saw charred bodies scattered throughout the ruins of the camp and heard people screaming as firefighters tried to put out the blaze. “The fire was so intense that it spread throughout the camp,” he said.
Dr. Marwan Hames, who works at Tal Sultan Medical Center, where many of the wounded were first taken, said most of the dead and wounded he saw were women and children. “Many bodies were badly burned, with limbs cut off and torn to pieces,” he said.
Hamas called the Israeli attack on Rafah a “horrific war crime” in a statement and called for the “urgent and immediate implementation” of the ICJ ruling. The group did not mention the Israeli military’s claim that two Hamas officials were killed in the attack.
The Israeli military said it had taken a number of steps to reduce the risk of civilian harm before the strike, including aerial reconnaissance and the use of precision-guided munitions. “Based on these measures, we assessed that no harm would come to unaffected civilians,” it said.
But an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said on Monday that a preliminary military investigation concluded that the attack or shrapnel from it may have accidentally ignited flammable materials in the camp. Witnesses described a large fire that broke out after the attack.
Military drone video of the attack, reviewed by The New York Times, showed munitions hitting an area containing several large cabin structures and parked cars.
Two Israeli officials said the attack took place outside a designated humanitarian zone set up to provide safe haven for evacuees. Created a map It is the location of the attack relative to that area that is displayed.
The military identified the two targets of the attack as Yassin Rabie, a commander in Hamas’ leadership in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Khaled al-Najjar, a senior official in the same faction of the group.
The International Court of Justice, a UN arm that is hearing allegations of genocide in Gaza, called on Israel in a vaguely worded order to immediately halt any actions in Rafah “which are likely to result in a deterioration of living conditions for the Palestinian community in Gaza, leading to its total or partial destruction”.
Israeli officials have argued that the 13-2 vote allows Israel to continue fighting in Rafah because doing so would not cause genocide. But some of Israel’s allies disagree. Even before the latest civilian deaths, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said the offensive in Rafah was “not in accordance with international law.”
Israel’s war cabinet met late Sunday to discuss continuing efforts to reach a ceasefire to free hostages taken during the Oct. 7 attack, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.
diplomat Aims to restart The talks will take place sometime next week, according to three officials briefed on the process. This weekend in Paris.
Reported by Hiba Yazbek, Abu Bakr al-Bashir, Iyad Abu Hwella, Patrick Kingsley, Myra Novick and Johnson Rice.
