Israel Faces World After Rafah Strike Kills Dozens, Including Hamas Leaders (Worthy News In-Depth)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – Israel came under world pressure Monday to halt its offensive in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah after dozens of people reportedly died in bombardments that Israel’s military said targeted senior Hamas operatives.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed its airstrikes killed Hamas leader Yassin Rabia, head of the Hamas West Bank division, and Khalid Nagaar, a senior member of the West Bank division.
Nagaar orchestrated shooting attacks and “other acts of terror in Judea and Samaria,” also known as the West Bank, and facilitated the transfer of funds for Hamas and terrorist acts, the Israeli military said.
Khalid carried out several attacks, including between 2001 and 2003, in which Israeli civilians were killed, and additional IDF soldiers were killed and injured, Israeli sources said.
An IDF aircraft struck the men in a “Hamas compound” in Rafah, Israeli military officials explained, adding that they were “legitimate targets.”
The attack came hours after Hamas had fired eight rockets from Rafah towards Tel Aviv – the first long-range attacks on the central Israeli city since January, witnesses said.
Yet “[The IDF] acknowledged that as a result of [our] attack [in Rafah] and a subsequent fire in the area, several uninvolved individuals were harmed. The incident is under investigation.”
DOZENS DEAD
The death toll from the Israeli bombardment reached at least 45 on Monday, most of them civilians, said the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, but those figures couldn’t be verified.
“Ambulance crews are transporting a large number of martyrs and injured individuals” as the strikes hit tents for displaced people near a United Nations facility in Tal al-Sultan, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) north-west of the center of Rafah, said the Palestine Red Crescent.
The aid group added that “the Israeli occupation designated this location as a humanitarian area.”
The site was not included in areas ordered evacuated by the Israeli army earlier this month. It was managed by UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, aid workers said.
The Hamas-run health ministry claimed that among the 45 people killed were 23 women, children, and elderly.
A senior official in Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency, Mohammad al-Mughayyir, said the agency’s rescue workers had seen “charred bodies and dismembered limbs,” as well as “cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly.”
Hamas, deemed a terrorist organization by Israel and many of its allies, uses civilians as human shields, resulting in more deaths, the Israeli government says.
MASSIVE FIRE
Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman noted that it “appears from initial reports that somehow a fire broke out, and that sadly took the lives of others.”
The IDF’s advocate-general – who is charged with making sure the military acts by the law – called the incident in Rafah “very difficult” and said the army “regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians during the war.”
Graphic footage approved by Hamas showed several structures ablaze next to a banner saying “Kuwaiti Peace Camp ‘1’” and first responders and bystanders carrying several bodies.
“We were sitting at the door of the house safely. Suddenly, we heard the sound of a missile,” witness Fadi Dukhan recalled.
“We ran and found the street covered in smoke,” he said, adding that he and others saw a girl and a young man who the blast had killed.
Abed Mohammed al-Attar said his brother and sister-in-law were killed, leaving their children as orphans.
As the extent of the drama unfolded, world leaders were quick to condemn Israel without questioning why Hamas fighters had been hiding in the area.
FRANCE ‘OUTRAGED’
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged” by what had happened. “These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians,” he noted on social media platform X.
“I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire.”
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, which itself had come under pressure over its role in last year’s Hamas massacre in Israel, said reports of attacks on families seeking shelter in Rafah were “horrifying.”
“Information coming out of Rafah about further attacks on families seeking shelter is horrifying,” UNRWA wrote on X.
“There are reports of mass casualties, including children and women among those killed. Gaza is hell on earth. Images from last night are yet another testament to that.”
Qatar warned that the strike could complicate its mediation efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Israel says the operations in Rafah are necessary to kill or capture the last battalions of Hamas, which it pledged to destroy.
OCTOBER 7
The war was triggered by the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel when the group killed some 1,200 people, including babies, and raped women while kidnapping hundreds of others.
Israel said it had to respond to what it describes as “the worst atrocities against Jews” since the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah.
However, the U.N.’s top court said Friday that “in conformity with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, Israel must 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 could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
Israeli officials said over the weekend that the wording by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, did not rule out all military action.
“Israel has not and will not carry out military operations in the Rafah area that create living conditions that could destroy the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part,” National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a statement.
About 1.5 million people had been taking refuge in Rafah before May 6, when Israel began what it called “targeted” ground operations in eastern areas of the city to destroy the last remaining Hamas strongholds and rescue hostages it believes are being held there.
The U.N. estimates that more than 800,000 people have fled in response to orders from the IDF to evacuate to an “expanded humanitarian area” stretching from al-Mawasi, just north-west of Rafah, to the southern city of Khan Younis and the central town of Deir al-Balah.
MANY KILLED
At least 36,050 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive, claims the Hamas-run health ministry, without differentiating between Hamas fighters and civilians.
Israel estimates about 30,000 people were killed, nearly half of them Hamas fighters, in an overcrowded enclave of over 2.3 million people.
In a worrying sign, Hamas said late Sunday that Palestinians must “rise up and march” against the IDF’s “massacre” in Rafah.
“In light of the horrific Zionist massacre, this evening committed by the criminal occupation army against the tents of the displaced… We call on the masses of our people in the West Bank, Jerusalem, the occupied territories, and abroad to rise up and march angrily against the ongoing Zionist massacre against our people in the sector,” the Palestinian terrorist group said in a statement.
It did not mention its massacre on October 7 that triggered this armed conflict.
Its call for a march against the “Zionist” massacre, seen as Hamas’ codeword for Jews, was due to further boost Israel’s resolve to eliminate the organization.
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