Israeli forces struck one of the largest residential towers in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, residents said, intensifying pressure on the last area of the enclave they have yet to seize. invaded and where more than a million displaced Palestinians are taking refuge.
The 12-story Burj al-Masri building, located about 500 meters from the border with Egypt, was damaged in the airstrike early Saturday morning.
Dozens of families were left homeless, but no casualties were reported, residents said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident.
One of the tower’s 300 residents told the Reuters news agency that Israel had given them a 30-minute warning to flee the building at night.
“People were surprised, they ran down the stairs, some fell, it was chaos. People left their belongings and money,” Mohammad al-Nabrees said, adding that among those who stumbled down the stairs during the panicked evacuation was a friend’s pregnant wife.
An official from Fatah, the Rafah-based party which dominates the Palestinian Authority and has limited autonomy in the occupied West Bank, said he feared that hitting the Rafah tower was a sign of a imminent Israeli invasion.
Five months after Israel’s relentless air and ground attacks on Gaza began, health authorities say nearly 31,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 72,500 injured and thousands more are likely under the rubble.
The offensive plunged the Palestinian territory, already shaken by 17 years of blockade led by Israel, into a humanitarian catastrophe. Much of it has been reduced to rubble and most of the 2.3 million people have been displaced, with the United Nations warning of disease and famine.
