Israeli Airstrikes on Southern Gaza Kill at Least 10 Palestinians in Rafah

Israeli airstrikes connected the confederate Gaza metropolis of Rafah connected Saturday killed respective civilians, including women and children, according to Palestinian authorities media, sending much fearfulness done an country wherever implicit 1 cardinal displaced Palestinians are crowded into tents and impermanent quarters.

For galore weeks, Palestinians person been bracing for an announced Israeli crushed violative connected Rafah, the southernmost portion of Gaza, wherever much than fractional of the strip’s 2.2 cardinal residents fled aft being forced from their homes by much than six months of Israeli bombardment and a crushed invasion.

The airstrikes deed 2 household homes, sidesplitting 10 residents, and missiles and artillery besides struck different areas of Rafah and the surrounding area, according to the Wafa quality agency.

The Israeli subject would not instantly remark connected the strikes. It has said the extremity of its violative successful Gaza is to eradicate Hamas, the equipped radical that has controlled the Gaza Strip for astir 2 decades.

“It was similar an earthquake,” Mohammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant who is sheltering with his household successful a structure successful a ample Rafah encampment, said of the shaking from the strikes.

The archetypal onslaught deed astatine a small past midnight, shaking the world and lighting up the nighttime sky, and a 2nd 1 came soon after, helium said. “When we perceive these strikes we don’t cognize what to do,” helium said. “Everyone is saying the aforesaid thing, ‘Where tin we go?’”

President Biden and different satellite leaders person urged Israel not to invade Rafah due to the fact that it would marque an already dire humanitarian situation adjacent worse.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not heeded those calls and claims a crushed violative is indispensable to “complete the elimination of Hamas’s battalions” and to destruct its passageway networks.

Saturday’s strikes stoked fears for Palestinians successful Rafah that an penetration could beryllium imminent.

In a briefing to the Security Council this week, Secretary-General António Guterres said that Israel’s subject violative successful Rafah would “compound this humanitarian catastrophe.”

Rahaf Al-Madhoun, 17, was streaming unrecorded connected TikTok to speech astir the surviving conditions successful Rafah, erstwhile the archetypal airstrike deed precise close, she said. She stopped to cod herself earlier continuing. Then she described the panic sown by the strikes and the ever-present buzz of surveillance drones overhead.

“We’re astatine a loss, I swear,” she said. “The fearfulness itself is sidesplitting us.”

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.