Palestinian Rockets Followed by Israeli Raid on Rafah Refugee Camp

An Israeli airstrike hit a refugee camp in Rafah, Gaza, killing dozens after Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv, escalating the conflict despite upcoming ceasefire talks.

Heavy losses were reported in the refugee camp in the Rafah area of Gaza early on Sunday night when Israeli air forces targeted it, said Hamas authorities. The strike occurred only a few hours after Hamas had targeted Tel Aviv with a number of rockets from Rafah, the first time when the city was attacked since January.

The Israeli military said that it had attacked one of the compounds of the Hamas in northwest Rafah and killed two key figures of the Hamas with a “surgical” air strike. But in the videos from the scene, there was a huge explosion and burning of the shelter for displaced Palestinians that is approximately two kilometers away in Tal al-Sultan neighborhood. 

The health ministry in Gaza, affiliated with the Hamas group, said at least 35 were killed, including women and children, and dozens of others were wounded in the explosion that occurred at the displacement camp. Currently, there are still search and rescue operations going on and it is believed that more people will be found dead.

An eyewitness, who insisted on anonymity, narrated to Reuters how the entire neighborhood in Tal Al-Sultan was burnt, and corpses were found “cut into pieces. ”

Earlier on Sunday, the sound of an air raid siren was heard in Tel Aviv where eight rockets were fired from Rafah toward the Israeli city. Some of the missiles were shot down by the air defenses while others landed on the open fields.   

The operation in Rafah had been going on for over three weeks and had not stopped after an International Court of Justice ruling on Friday ordering Israel to stop the operation aimed at evicting the remaining Hamas forces from what had been described as their last big stronghold.

The Hamas military wing justified the rocket attacks by stating that the Israeli forces have been committing what it referred to as a massacre of civilians in Rafah where over 800,000 Palestinians have been displaced since the start of the Israeli campaign as observed by the UN. The talks on a ceasefire were to have resumed this week.

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The increase was an obvious downturn in the war that started in October when Hamas militants killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 252 others. According to Hamas’s count, approximately 36,000 Palestinians have died since then.