The Israeli army said, on Sunday evening, that it carried out a precise strike on a compound belonging to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in an attack launched on a camp for displaced people west of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, while acknowledging that there were casualties among civilians.
According to the Civil Defense in Gaza, 50 Palestinians were transferred, either killed or wounded, as a result of an Israeli bombing on a displacement camp in the Tal Al-Sultan area on Sunday evening.
On the other hand, the Israeli army claimed – in a statement – that planes recently attacked a Hamas compound in Rafah, where its senior leaders were staying. He claimed that he killed the director of Hamas’s West Bank office, Yassin Rabie, and another leader in the movement called Khaled Al-Najjar.
The occupation army statement added that Rabie and Al-Najjar were responsible for organizing and financing operations against Israeli targets in the West Bank and inside Israel, noting that “the attack was carried out against militants (…) using precision munitions, and based on preliminary intelligence information indicating the use of this area by Hamas militants.” (Tel Sultan).
Safe area
The massacre took place in an area that the army had declared a “safe zone,” and did not warn its residents or request that it be evacuated of the displaced. It came two days after the International Court of Justice decided to stop the Israeli military attack in Rafah immediately.
The army continued, “As a result of the attack and the outbreak of a fire in the area, a number of uninvolved people were injured, and the incident is under review,” it claimed.
Since May 6, Israel has been launching a ground attack on Rafah, and the next day it seized the Palestinian side of the Rafah land crossing with Egypt, which closed it to the exit of wounded people to receive treatment and the entry of already scarce humanitarian aid.
The attack forced at least 810,000 Palestinians to flee from Rafah, where there were about 1.5 million people, including about 1.4 million displaced from other areas in the Strip.
Strategic Communications Coordinator for the US National Security Council, John Kirby, said that the US administration is aware of the attack on Rafah and that the US National Security Council is collecting more reports about the attack.
