Published: 28 May 2024
Last updated: 28 May 2024
An Israeli airstrike has caused a huge blaze at a tented area for displaced people in Rafah, killing 45 people and wounding 60 on Monday.
Israel has described the event as a “tragic mishap”, which occurred when a planned precision strike ignited fires in a Rafah neighbourhood where thousands of displaced Gazans live in makeshift accommodation.
The Palestinian health ministry in the Hamas-controlled area said about half of the dead are women, children and older adults.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said in parliament that “something unfortunately went tragically wrong” with the airstrike. “We are investigating the incident and will reach conclusions, because this is our policy,” he said.
But some analysts say an incident of this kind was inevitable given the scale of Israeli military operations and the density of the displaced population in Gaza.
ICJ order to stop Rafah operation
The strike, one of the deadliest single incidents in the eight-month war to date, came two days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ordered Israel to stop its operation in Rafah immediately.
The president of court Nawaf Salam said the humanitarian situation in Rafah had deteriorated further and was now classified as “disastrous”, meaning the ICJ’s previously issued provisional measures were insufficient.
He said the court had voted by a majority of 13 votes to two that “Israel shall, in conformity with its obligations under the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by civilians in Rafah governorate… immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in the Rafah governorate which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
Comments2
Rachel Sussman29 May at 11:02 am
How sad that you jumped on the waggon with the likes of BBC and friends to ‘point the finger’ at Israel and accuse it of ‘botching’ its operation in Rafa without giving it the benefit of investigating what happened. As it is, the incident is not an ‘Israeli failure’ but a failure of Hamas… and how sad that one of the comentator on this article expresses ‘lack of confidence’ in Israeli investigation. I for one have more confidence in a Government that takes responsibility and commits to explore what happened than in a terror organization and a ‘bandwagon’ of journalists who are quick to blame and point the finger…
How dusappointing indeed.
Wesley Parish28 May at 08:09 am
I’m afraid my expectations of the IDF’s ability to conduct a genuine investigation into its misdeeds, are coloured by reading a novel by Simon Louvish, titled “City of Blok”, where one character says this: “Palestinians can fly! Every time the IDF shoots into the air to disperse protests, Palestinians get bullet-wounds in legs and torso”. I think the IDF would sooner say that its soldiers were menaced by wild haggises during haggis mating season and had to shoot in self-defense, than admit the truth – that they knew very well what they were doing, and didn’t care about the consequences.