25 killed, over 50 injured as Israeli forces shell tent camps in Rafah

This was the latest deadly attack in the tiny Palestinian enclave where hundreds of thousands have fled fighting

Deir Al-Balah: Israeli forces shelled tent camps for displaced Palestinians north of Gaza’s southern city of rafah on Friday, killing at least 25 people and wounding another 50, according to the territory’s health officials and emergency workers.

This was the latest deadly attack in the tiny Palestinian enclave where hundreds of thousands have fled fighting between Israel and Hamas. It comes less than a month after an Israeli bombing triggered a deadly fire that tore through a camp for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, drawing widespread international outrage — including from some of Israel’s closest allies — over the military’s expanding offensive into Rafah.

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According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for Civil Defense first responders 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 Health Ministry in Gaza reported the number of people killed and wounded in the attacks.

The locations of the attacks provided by the Civil Defense appear to be just outside an Israeli-designated safe zone on the Mediterranean coast.

The Israeli military said the episode was under review but that “there is no indication that a strike was carried out by the IDF” inside the safe zone, using an acronym for the Israeli forces. 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.

Witnesses whose relatives died in one of the bombardments near a Red Cross field hospital said that Israeli forces fired a second volley that killed people who came out of their tents. The attack began with a munition that only made a loud bang and bright flash, said Mona Ashour, who lost her husband after he went to investigate what was happening.

“We were in our tent, and they hit with a ‘sound bomb’ near the Red Cross tents, and then my husband came out at the first sound,” Ashour said, holding back tears while clutching a young girl outside Nasser Hospital in nearby Khan Younis.

“And then they hit with the second one, which was a little closer to the entrance of the Red Cross,” she said. Hasan al-Najjar said his sons were killed helping people who panicked after the first strike. “My two sons went after they heard the women and children screaming,” he said at the hospital.