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Israel says the strike targeted a Hamas compound.
An Israeli airstrike on a makeshift tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah, Gaza, killed at least 45 people on Sunday night and wounded 249, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday. The Israeli military said the strike was aimed at a Hamas compound.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it was looking into reports that “several civilians in the area were harmed” by the airstrike and a subsequent fire. A follow-up statement said the strike had killed two Hamas leaders. A legal official with the military said Monday that the strike was under review.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that its ambulance crews had taken a “large” number of victims to the Tal as Sultan clinic and field hospitals in Rafah, where few functioning hospitals remain, and that “numerous” people had been trapped in fires at the site of the strikes.
The Red Crescent said the strike hit the Tal as Sultan area of Rafah, within what the Israeli military has designated as a humanitarian zone, where it had told Palestinian civilians to go for shelter ahead of its ground offensive in Rafah. But two Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said the strike was not inside a humanitarian zone.
Israel’s assault on Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, has come under intense scrutiny, particularly after the International Court of Justice on Friday ordered Israel to “immediately” halt the military offensive there. Though the court has few effective means of enforcing its order, it puts more pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rein in its attacks in Gaza and reduce civilian casualties.
Bilal al-Sapti, 30, a construction worker in Rafah, said that shrapnel from the strike tore up the tent where he was staying with his wife and two children, but that his family was uninjured.
“What kind of a tent will protect us from missiles and shrapnel?” he said.
Mr. al-Sapti said that at the scene of the strike he saw charred bodies and people screaming as firefighters tried to put out the flames. “The fire was very strong and was all over the camp,” he said. “There was darkness and no electricity.”
Doctors Without Borders said more than 15 dead people and dozens of wounded in the Rafah strike were brought to a trauma stabilization center that it supports in Tal as Sultan.
Dr. James Smith, a British emergency specialist in Rafah who has been working at that center, said the attack had killed displaced people who were “seeking some degree of sanctuary and shelter in tarpaulin tents.”
Speaking from a house a few miles away from the trauma center, a distance that he said had become too dangerous to cross, Dr. Smith said footage shared by his colleagues at the trauma center of injuries from the strike and the fire were “truly some of the worst that I have seen.”
Though the United Nations estimates that more than 800,000 people fled Rafah in a matter of weeks after the Israeli military announced its offensive, the area remains densely populated, Dr. Smith said.
“These are very, very tightly packed tents,” he said. “And 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.
Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Israeli military’s top legal official, said on Monday that the airstrike was under review. She said the military police had opened around 70 criminal investigations into potential misconduct during the war.
“Naturally, in a war of such scope and intensity, complex incidents also occur,” General Tomer-Yerushalmi said in a speech to the Israeli Bar Association. “Some of the incidents, like last night’s incident in Rafah, are very serious.” She added that the military “regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians during the war.”
Reporting was contributed by Patrick Kingsley, Johnatan Reiss, Iyad Abuheweila and Aaron Boxerman.
— Anushka Patil
key developments
Cease-fire talks, and other news.
Israel’s war cabinet was set to meet on Sunday night to discuss continuing efforts to reach a cease-fire deal and free hostages held in Gaza, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the talks. Diplomats are aiming to restart negotiations for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas at some point in the next week, according to three officials briefed on the process. According to the officials, preliminary discussions were held this weekend in Paris.
Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet who recently threatened to quit the government, said he was seeking to establish an independent commission to investigate Israel’s failure to stop the Hamas-led surprise attack on Oct. 7, as well as its conduct in the war. Under Mr. Gantz’s proposal, the commission would also probe whether Israeli military and political officials had acted in accordance with international law. Mr. Gantz said on Sunday that he had submitted his proposal for cabinet approval; it was unclear whether Mr. Netanyahu and his allies would back the move. A rival of Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Gantz has said he would leave Israel’s emergency wartime government unless the prime minister answered major questions about the future of the war.
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Hamas fires rockets at central Israel for the first time in months.
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Hamas launched a barrage of rockets at central Israel on Sunday afternoon, setting off air-raid sirens in the Tel Aviv area for the first time since at least late January, and showing that the group retains some long-range missile capabilities more than seven months into Israel’s war against the militant group in Gaza.
The Israeli military said at least eight rockets were fired from the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where Israeli forces have been advancing in an operation against Hamas that has drawn global scrutiny. Over 800,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah in the face of the Israeli offensive, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the enclave, according to the United Nations.
Air defenses shot down “a number” of rockets, according to the Israeli military, and there were no immediate reports of major damage.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service, said two women were lightly wounded as they fled to a bomb shelter. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, took responsibility for the rocket fire, saying it came “in response to massacres against civilians.”
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Israeli leaders have insisted for months that a large-scale ground operation in Rafah was necessary to root out the brigades of Hamas militants that remain in the city. The Biden administration, the United Nations and human rights groups have all expressed serious concern over the offensive, which they said threatened the safety of civilians sheltering there.
On Friday, the International Court of Justice appeared to order Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah, although at least some of the court’s judges said limited operations could continue despite the decision.
The Israeli military said its troops continued to fight in and around Rafah over the weekend, engaging in firefights. And on Sunday, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, visited the city, indicating that the military had no intention of stopping. Mr. Gallant received a situational assessment from troops there and was briefed on the “deepening of operations,” according to a statement from his office.
“Our goals in Gaza are emphasized here in Rafah — to destroy Hamas, return the hostages, and maintain freedom of operation,” he told troops, according to the statement.
Israeli politicians also said the rocket fire demonstrated the necessity of the Rafah offensive. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, called the incident proof that “wherever Hamas is, the Israeli military must act.”
The rocket barrage briefly disrupted daily life in central Israel, where many people have settled into a kind of wartime routine. Thousands of Israelis called up for the military’s reserves in the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks have returned home, and rocket attacks have been largely aimed at communities close to the border with Gaza and with Lebanon.
— Aaron Boxerman
Aid deliveries from Egypt resume going into Gaza.
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Aid trucks from Egypt entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday under a new U.S.-brokered agreement to reopen a vital conduit for humanitarian relief, the Israeli military and the Egyptian Red Crescent said.
Egypt had blocked aid from entering the enclave via its territory since Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing — which provides access to southern Gaza — in early May. The two sides have traded blame over that crossing’s closure, even as aid has piled up on the Egyptian side.
After U.S. pressure, Egypt announced on Friday that it had agreed to divert trucks through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, which is roughly two miles from the Rafah crossing, as a temporary measure.
Some 126 trucks from Egypt containing food, fuel and other necessities entered the Gaza Strip through Kerem Shalom on Sunday, the Israeli military said in a statement. The trucks were inspected by Israeli officials, said Ahmad Ezzat, an Egyptian Red Crescent official.
The quantity of food, water and medicines reaching Gazans has plummeted since the war began nearly eight months ago. As a result, the United Nations and aid groups have been warning of widespread hunger in the enclave and urging Israel to open more routes for aid to enter. But in recent weeks, aid shipments into Gaza through the two main land conduits have been interrupted.
One of those crossings is Kerem Shalom, which sits at the intersection of Gaza, Israel and Egypt. Israel temporarily closed Kerem Shalom a few weeks ago after a Hamas rocket attack there killed four of its soldiers. Since then Israel has allowed some aid into Gaza through Kerem Shalom, but its distribution has been a point of contention. Israel says that aid agencies must distribute the aid. But the agencies say that the Israeli military’s activity in southern Gaza has made their job nearly impossible.
The other major gateway for aid is between Gaza and Egypt, at Rafah. Israeli forces captured the crossing as part of their initial advance toward the city overnight on May 6. Since then, Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials have been unable to strike a deal to resume aid shipments there.
Israel has been under international pressure to find a way to reopen Rafah to prevent an even greater humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. On Friday, the World Court ordered Israel to “open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision” of aid. Israel pledged to do so, but said it would also “prevent terrorist organizations from controlling the crossing.”
When the Rafah crossing closed, the Egyptian government also initially held out on sending aid trucks toward Kerem Shalom, in what American and Israeli officials called an attempt to pressure Israel to back down from its operation in Rafah.
On Friday, Egypt and the United States announced that Cairo had agreed to temporarily allow food, basic supplies and fuel to move from its territory into Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Egyptian president, emphasized that the measure was a stopgap until “a new legal mechanism” could be found on the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing.
It remains unclear when the Rafah crossing will reopen for aid. U.S. officials are expected to head to Cairo this week to “support efforts to reopen the Rafah crossing,” according to the White House.
— Aaron Boxerman and Vivek Shankar
