Israeli strikes on tent camps near Rafah kill at least 25, Gaza health officials say
At least 25 people were killed and a further 50 wounded in Israeli strikes on tent camps for displaced Palestinians near Rafah, Gaza health officials have said.
The attacks took place near a Red Cross field hospital north of Rafah.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the hospital was flooded with casualties, and it condemned the firing of “high-calibre projectiles” a few metres from the facility.
Hundreds of people live in tents nearby, including many of the hospital staff, the ICRC said.
According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for Civil Defense paramedics in Rafah, witnesses told rescue workers about Friday's shelling at two locations in a coastal area that has become filled with makeshift tents.
The locations of the attacks provided by the Civil Defense and the Red Cross hospital appear to be just outside an Israeli-designated safe zone on the Mediterranean coast, known as Muwasi.
The Israeli military said the episode was under review but that “there is no indication that a strike was carried out by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces)” inside the safe zone. It did not offer details on the episode or say what the intended targets might have been.
Israel has previously bombed locations in the vicinity of the “humanitarian zone” in Muwasi, a rural area with no water or sewage systems where displaced Palestinians have built tent camps in recent months.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that it tries to minimise civilian deaths. It blames the large number of civilian casualties on militants and says the fatalities are because fighters operate among the population.
More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict, which is now in its ninth month.
Ceasefire negotiations are still underway, but leaders on both sides have stalled and rejected various parts of proposals for halting the fighting.
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