At least 26 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Rafah in southern Gaza, Palestinian officials say, as international calls grow for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and the Hamas.
Footage from the scene shared online and verified by Tel Aviv Tribune on Thursday showed local residents trying to put out a fire and rescue survivors as black smoke rose from one of the buildings.
Two adjacent houses belonging to the families of Abou Dhbaa and Ashour were destroyed in the attack on the town, where tens of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge since a week-long truce broke down in early December .
The displaced people are sleeping in makeshift shelters and on the streets after being evacuated from the north and other areas of southern Gaza that were previously considered safe by the Israeli army.
“It was difficult because of the dust and people’s screams. We went there and we saw our neighbor who had 10 martyrs,” said Fadel Shabaan, a resident who rushed to the area after the bombing.
“It’s a safe (refugee) camp. There is nothing here. Children are playing football in the street,” he told the Reuters news agency.
Gaza health authorities said 26 people were killed in the attack. Gaza’s health ministry said Thursday that at least 179 people were killed and 303 injured in Israeli attacks over the past day, bringing the death toll in Gaza since the war began on October 7 to 18,787, including 50,897 injured.
Footage verified by Tel Aviv Tribune shows grieving relatives in front of the shrouded bodies of at least 20 people.
A member of the Ashour family said they lost their mother, two brothers, their wives and their children.
“I have a niece who is still under the rubble,” she said. “We had displaced people. One of them was our cousin who had been displaced from the north. Our neighbor and his grandmother, displaced from Beit Lahiya, were also killed.
Another member of the Ashour family said there were more than 50 people inside the four-story building.
“They were people from Beit Lahiya, Jabalia, al-Saftawi and Nuseirat,” she explained. “We lost (an) old lady, a five-month pregnant woman, her little boy and her husband,… my brother, his son and his wife.”
Fighting rages in Gaza
Two weeks after the truce broke down, the war has entered an intense phase with fighting now raging across the Palestinian enclave and international organizations warning of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe in the region.
Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire, including a U.N. Security Council resolution blocked by a U.S. veto last week and another that was overwhelmingly passed by the General Assembly this week .
Despite Israeli commitments to reduce harm to civilians, Israel this month expanded its ground campaign from north to south, leaving no part of the enclave unscathed. He says he offers warnings where possible before attacking an area.
In the main southern city, Khan Younis, where Israeli forces reached the center this week, an entire city block was reduced to dust overnight. Although most people fled after Israeli warnings, neighbors who later dug through the rubble with a hand shovel said they believed four people were under the rubble. A body had been found.
In the north, including in the ruins of Gaza City, fighting has intensified since Israel announced last month that its troops had largely achieved their military objectives.
In Jabaliya, also in the north, Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli forces stormed a hospital, arresting and mistreating medical staff and preventing them from treating a group of injured patients, including at least two were dead.
Twelve children were in the intensive care unit, where electricity had been cut and there was no milk, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
The Israeli military said Palestinian fighters were operating inside the hospital, 70 of whom went there “with weapons in hand” and were currently being questioned.
Washington has provided diplomatic cover for its ally but has expressed growing concern over civilian deaths. US President Joe Biden, whose government has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, delivered his strongest rebuke of the war on Wednesday. He said Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza was eroding its international support.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who arrived in Israel on Thursday, will discuss with the Israelis the need to be more precise in their strikes, spokesman John Kirby said.
Up to 45 percent of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions dropped by Israel on Gaza since October 7 were unguided “dumb bombs,” according to a US intelligence assessment reported by CNN.
Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a member of Israel’s security cabinet and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, rejected Biden’s characterization of the Israeli strikes as indiscriminate.
“There is no such thing as ‘dumb bombs.’ Some bombs are more precise. Some bombs are less precise. What we have is mainly precise pilots,” he told Army Radio. “There is no chance that the Israeli Air Force or other military units fired at targets that were not terrorist targets.”
“(Sullivan) will likely refer to the UN General Assembly vote for a ceasefire earlier this week, but we have already heard from Netanyahu and (Israeli Defense Minister Yoav) Gallant “To say that this war will be fought the way they want it to be fought,” Al said. Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu vowed to continue the war “until victory, no less than that,” and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the war would continue “with or without international support.”
The United Nations estimates that 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.
The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said Wednesday that Palestinians in Gaza were “facing the darkest chapter in their history.”
He said they were “now crowded into less than a third” of the territory and suggested there could be an exodus to Egypt, “especially when the border is so close”.
Cold winter rains have battered the makeshift tents where displaced people struggle to survive without enough food, clean water, medicine or cooking fuel.
