Israeli strikes on tent camps near Rafah kill at least 25 and wound 50, Gaza
health officials say
BY WAFAA SHURAFA
June 21, 2024
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces shelled tent camps for
displaced Palestinians outside Gaza’s southern city of Rafah on Friday, killing
at least 25 people and wounding another 50, according to the territory’s
health officials and emergency workers.
This was the latest deadly attack in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of
thousands have fled fighting between Israel and Hamas. It comes less than a
month after an Israeli bombing triggered a deadly fire that tore through a
camp for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, drawing widespread
international outrage — including from some of Israel’s closest allies — over
the military’s expanding offensive into Rafah.
Witnesses whose relatives died in one of the bombardments near a Red
Cross field hospital north of Rafah told The Associated Press that Israeli
forces fired a second volley that killed people who came out of their tents.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said the hospital was flooded
with casualties, including 22 dead and 45 wounded, and condemned the
firing of “high-caliber projectiles” a few meters (yards) from the facility.
Hundreds of people live in tents nearby, including many of the hospital staff,
the ICRC said.
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The Latest | Gaza’s Health Ministry says 25 killed, 50 wounded in Israeli
strikes on tent camps
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According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for Civil Defense first
responders in Rafah, witnesses told rescue workers about Friday’s shelling at
two locations in a coastal area that has become filled with makeshift tents.
The Health Ministry in Gaza reported the number of people killed and
wounded in the attacks.
The locations of the attacks provided by the Civil Defense and the Red Cross
hospital appear to be just outside an Israeli-designated safe zone on the
Mediterranean coast, known as Muwasi. The Israeli military said the episode
was under review but that “there is no indication that a strike was carried out
by the IDF” inside the safe zone, using an acronym for Israel’s armed forces.
It did not offer details on the episode or say what the intended targets might
have been.
Israel has previously bombed locations in the vicinity of the “humanitarian
zone” in Muwasi, a rural area with no water or sewage systems where
displaced Palestinians have built tent camps in recent months.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that it tries to
minimize civilian deaths. It blames the large number of civilian casualties on
militants and says it’s because they operate among the population.
With Israel’s war against Hamas now in its ninth month, international criticism
is growing over the campaign of systematic destruction in Gaza, at a huge
cost in civilian lives. The top United Nations court has concluded there is a
“plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.
The attack near the Red Cross hospital began with a munition that only made
a loud bang and bright flash, said Mona Ashour, who lost her husband after
he went to investigate what was happening.
“We were in our tent, and they hit with a ‘sound bomb’ near the Red Cross
tents, and then my husband came out at the first sound,” Ashour said,
holding back tears while clutching a young girl outside Nasser Hospital in
nearby Khan Younis.
“And then they hit with the second one, which was a little closer to the
entrance of the Red Cross,” she said.
Hasan al-Najjar said his sons were killed helping people who panicked after
the first strike.
”My two sons went after they heard the women and children screaming,” he
said at the hospital. “They went to save the women, and they struck with the
second projectile, and my sons were martyred. They struck the place twice.”
The hospital’s location is known to all parties in the conflict and marked with
the Red Cross emblem, the ICRC noted on Friday. The 60-bed field hospital
was opened in mid-May to provide emergency surgeries, obstetric, pediatric
and outpatient care, according to a news release at the time, which shows
white tents covering an area about the size of a soccer field.
Israel is pushing ahead with its invasion of Rafah, where over a million
Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. Most have now fled
the city, but the United Nations says no place in Gaza is safe and
humanitarian conditions are dire as families shelter in tents and cramped
apartments without adequate food, water, or medical supplies.
Elsewhere, Civil Defense teams in the northern Gaza Strip recovered the
bodies of five people who were killed in an airstrike that hit two apartments in
Gaza City, and several others were wounded. An airstrike earlier Friday hit a
municipal garage in the city and killed five people.
Fadel Naeem, the orthopedic chief at al-Ahli hospital, said the bodies of 30
people were brought there Friday, calling it “a difficult and brutal day in Gaza
City.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli army said Friday that two soldiers were killed in
combat in central Gaza. No information was given about the circumstances
of the deaths of the two, both men in their 20s. Three other Israeli soldiers
were severely injured, the army said.
Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,400
people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not
distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Israel launched the war after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants
stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians —
and abducted about 250.
___
Associated Press writer Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, and Drew
Callister in New York contributed to this report.
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