10/18/2024–|Last updated: 10/18/202403:47 PM (Mecca time)
Tal al-Sultan Camp, also called “Tell al-Sultan Camp,” is located northwest of the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. It is considered a branch of the Rafah Camp. It was established as an alternative to the Canada Camp, which became within the Egyptian borders after the Camp David Accords, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA) began ( UNRWA) resettlement of Palestinians in 2000.
On October 17, 2024, the Israeli army announced that it had killed the head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Yahya Sinwar, in a military operation in the region.
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The camp is located northwest of the city of Rafah, and is considered a branch of the Rafah camp located in the center of the city and extending throughout most of it, along with other camps administratively affiliated with it, such as the Shaboura camp, Ashdod, and others.
The population of Rafah camp in 2024 reached about 44,227 people, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
Establishing the camp
The camp was established to accommodate refugees from the former Canada camp, which became within the borders of the city of Rafah inside Egypt after the Camp David Accords in 1978 between Egypt and Israel.
UNRWA established Canada Camp in 1967, after the occupation destroyed part of the Rafah camp with the aim of expanding some roads for “security” reasons. It was named after a Canadian division that was stationed in the region after 1956, and was affiliated with the United Nations.
UNRWA began preparing the new camp for Canada Camp refugees in 1994, with funds donated by the Canadian Development Agency, and the process of transporting refugees to Tal Sultan camp began in 2000, and their population at that time reached about 17 thousand people.
A stronghold of confrontations and targeting
With the start of clashes between the Islamic Resistance in Gaza and the Israeli occupation army following the launch of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle on October 7, 2023, the camp was a stronghold for many resistance operations and also a target of Israeli army fire, which committed several massacres in it.
About 35 Palestinians were martyred and dozens of others were injured in an Israeli bombing of a camp for displaced people in the Tal al-Sultan area on May 26, 2024, which led to the destruction and burning of a large number of tents.
On May 28, 2024, the Israeli occupation army intensively bombed the Tal al-Sultan area, causing the death of a number of Palestinians and besieging medical teams and patients inside the Tal al-Sultan Clinic and the Indonesian Hospital.
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, announced on June 15, 2024 that its fighters had managed to kill a group of Israeli soldiers in an ambush in a combined operation against occupation army vehicles penetrating the Saudi neighborhood of Tal al-Sultan.
On June 16, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli occupation fire in the neighborhood, and the Israeli army targeted ambulances that were trying to retrieve the bodies of martyrs.
The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, broadcast scenes that it said were of its fighters – in conjunction with the Al-Qassam Brigades – targeting an Israeli Merkava Paz tank at the Abu Ayyash Junction in the Tal Al-Sultan neighborhood, on August 13.
On August 24, the Al-Qassam Brigades published pictures of an operation carried out by its fighters against occupation soldiers in the Tal al-Sultan area, in which they destroyed two “Tiger” troop carriers, one from the window of a house and the other on a street in a destroyed residential area, both from a distance of a few meters.
Al-Qassam fighters also targeted a house in which an Israeli force was holed up, and the video showed the soldiers being clearly spotted in the window and balcony of the house before they were bombed with an anti-fortified and anti-personnel TPG device.
On October 17, 2024, the Israeli army and the Shin Bet published a joint statement, in which they announced the killing of 3 Qassam members after a clash with them in a building in Tal al-Sultan. The statement said, “The army and the Shin Bet are investigating the possibility that Yahya al-Sinwar was killed in this operation,” before That the army officially announce his death.
