On Sunday night, an Israeli airstrike hit the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood, about 2km (1.2 miles) north-west of Rafah city centre. Gaza’s health ministry put the death toll from the strikes at 45, with 249 wounded.
Here’s what else you need to know.
What happened?
Footage from the scene showed fires raging through tightly packed tents pitched close to Unrwa warehouses where aid supplies have been stored. There were horrifying videos of people frantically searching the rubble for survivors, burned bodies and a decapitated child.
Agence France-Presse quoted Mohammad al-Mughayyir, a senior official at the Gaza civil defence agency, as saying: “We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs … We also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly.” He said that rescue efforts had been hampered by the destruction of roads used by ambulances and a shortage of water to put fires out.
Eyewitnesses and victims told a similar story. “We pulled out people who were in an unbearable state,” Mohammed Abuassa, who rushed to the scene to help, told the Associated Press. “We pulled out children who were in pieces. We pulled out young and elderly people. The fire in the camp was unreal.”
The Red Cross said that its field hospital in Rafah had received an influx of casualties, and that others in the area were also receiving large numbers of patients. Gaza’s health ministry said that ambulance crews had been overwhelmed by the emergency.
The attack followed the first long-range rocket attack on Israel from Gaza since January, with eight rockets fired towards Tel Aviv from Rafah. Most of the rockets were intercepted or fell harmlessly in fields, and no significant injuries were reported.
The Israeli military initially claimed that the strike by its air force had hit a Hamas compound with “precise ammunition and on the basis of precise intelligence”. It said that two senior Hamas officials, Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, had been killed in the attack. But it also said that it was “aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed” and said that “the incident is under review”. On Monday afternoon, Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged in a speech at the Knesset that civilians had died.
Was the attack on a “safe zone”?
Tal al-Sultan was not included in a list of areas that the IDF ordered to be evacuated earlier this month. According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and others, the area had been designated as a humanitarian zone where civilians can seek shelter.
Israeli officials claimed that the attack was outside of the humanitarian zone. This IDF map published yesterday shows the strike as being in an area not covered by any guarantee of safety. But last week, an IDF spokesman appeared to say in a video that the area in question was safe.
Marc Owen Jones, an academic specialising in digital disinformation in the Middle East, produced this useful thread highlighting ambiguities and imprecision in IDF maps and statements about the area, which provide ample scope for confusion. (He also noted: “Quibbling about the exact zones also masks the point that regardless of where the attack took place, it involved mass killing of civilians that is impossible to justify.”)
Civilians sheltering in the area are likely to have drawn comfort from the fact that it was so close to Unrwa warehouses, which are off-limits for attack under international law. The UN agency decried what it said were “further attacks on families seeking shelter”.
Dr James Smith, a British doctor with Medecins Sans Frontières, told the New York Times that civilians in the area were in “very, very tightly packed tents” and said that “a fire like this could spread over a huge distance with catastrophic consequences in a very, very short space of time”. The attack was “one of the most horrific things that I have seen or heard of in all of the weeks that I’ve been working in Gaza,” he added.
How many civilians remain in Rafah?
Over the course of the war, more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have sought refuge in Rafah. But about 1 million have been forced to flee again, as Israel has moved into the outskirts of the city this month. 3-400,000 civilians are thought to remain in the area.
The 800,000 said by the UN to have fled Rafah in recent weeks are mostly now sheltering to the north of the city. But the “safe zones” they have moved to frequently lack clean water, medical care, and other basic amenities. Those who are still in Rafah are living in “disastrous” circumstances, the international court of justice (ICJ) – the UN’s highest court – said on Friday.
In its ruling, which ordered Israel to halt its assault in Rafah, the ICJ also said that it is not persuaded “that the evacuation efforts and related measures that Israel affirms to have undertaken to enhance the security of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and in particular those recently displaced from the Rafah governorate, are sufficient to alleviate the immense risk to which the Palestinian population is exposed”.
The Rafah border crossing, and another nearby at Kerem Shalom, have also been rendered largely inaccessible: while Israel says that aid has been allowed to enter, UN agencies say that it is too dangerous to pick it up on the other side. An agreement was reached to allow 200 trucks through at Kerem Shalom on Sunday, but it is not yet clear whether relief agencies will be able to retrieve supplies.
What happens next?
The ICJ’s ruling is legally binding but unenforceable, and Israeli ministers have said that they will defy it. That is despite the fact, as explained by Peter Beaumont here, that the court’s statement appears to imply that it views a full assault on Rafah as having the potential to reach the threshold of genocide.
Haaretz yesterday reported Western diplomats saying that the timing of the incident could lead to a stricter interpretation of the ruling by other countries: “Two days after the ICJ said to Israel, ‘you can operate in Rafah but don’t cause mass civilian casualties,’ an airstrike causes mass civilian casualties,” one said. “This will turn up the pressure for a complete halt of the offensive.”
Over the last two weeks, the IDF has amassed troops on the ground in and around Rafah while staying clear of the most densely populated areas. It is not yet clear whether the strike in Tal al-Sultan will be followed by a new ground offensive. But it has drawn condemnation from around the world, and Qatar, which is mediating talks intended to revive stalled efforts for a truce, has warned that the attack may “hinder reaching an agreement for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the exchange of prisoners and detainees”.
A key question now is whether the US, which has previously joined with the UK in saying that it will not support Israel’s assault on Rafah unless a credible plan to protect civilians is put in place, will put pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to hold back. But, as Patrick Wintour wrote on Friday, “the definition of what constitutes a major offensive has become more flexible” since that red line was first put in place.
Last week, US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, claimed that Israel’s operation so far had been “more targeted and limited”. Since the attack the US has said it is “gathering more information” but not whether the latest round of civilian deaths in a designated safe zone breaches that condition. But to many observers, a major assault on Rafah is already under way – and civilians are paying the price.
