General Tomer-Yerushalmi: “The Airstrike is Over” and “The Fire is Almost Deficiency”
“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.”
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.
“These are very, very tightly packed tents,” he said. A fire in a short time could spread over a large area with catastrophic consequences.
The tragedy of Gaza: An Israeli air strike in the last refuge for Palestinians during the 1948 Gaza War and its repercussions on the humanitarian situation
Before this month, Rafah had been the last refuge for Palestinians during the war, with so much of Gaza being devastated. Almost 1.3 million Palestininans were allowed to stay in Rafah, but now more than half a million have left. Areas that are not under an order to evacuate are still densely populated.
Smith said that the footage of the strike and the fire that his colleagues shared at the trauma center were some of the worst that he had ever seen.
Smith told NPR that the people were burned alive in their tents. “This is unlike anything I have seen in the six-plus weeks I have been back here in Gaza. One of the most terrible massacres to have happened recently in the Gaza Strip and here in Rafah.
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.
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 no electricity.
The tent where the al-Sapti family were staying was torn up by the strike, but nobody was hurt.
In a separate statement, the military said that its troops were in the Rafah area engaging in close-quarters combat to prevent the harm of uninvolved civilians in the area.
At least 45 people were killed and over 250 were injured in an Israeli air strike on a makeshift tent camp in Gaza on Sunday night according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The Israeli military said the strike was aimed at a Hamas compound.
And on Monday night, first responders in Rafah reported seven women and children were killed in another airstrike on a home in the city. There were more deadly airstrikes throughout Gaza.
The Gaza health ministry said 45 people were killed by the blast and subsequent fires. The ministry said that 249 people were wounded.
I heard a loud noise at 6:30pm yesterday. I heard an explosion, it sounded like an earthquake,” he told NPR. When I jumped out the window, I saw injured children and one without a head.
Israel and Egypt are preparing to negotiate a ceasefire with the rest of its troops in a crisis of concern for the region of Rafah
Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure to negotiate a ceasefire and bring the remaining hostages home. Israel has been rocked by weekly protests by families of hostages and others calling for the resignation of Netanyahu. He is also under pressure by hard liners in his government that do not want a complete ceasefire.
Israeli media is reporting that officials say that negotiations are supposed to resume next week. There were some high level discussions in Paris this weekend between the Israeli Mossad’s David Barnea, the U.S. CIA’s William J. Burns and the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahma al-Thani.
A member of Egyptian security forces was killed near the crossing, according to the army’s spokesman.
Neither country said who opened fire, and there were no details on what happened. But the shooting reflects the escalating tension between the two nations since early May, when the city of Rafah in southern Gaza became the focus of Israel’s military campaign to defeat Hamas, an armed group that led a deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
“Several hours ago, a shooting incident took place on the Egyptian border. The incident is under review. There is a dialogue with the Egyptian side,” Israel’s military said in a statement.
Israel said that it halted the flow of aid through the Rafah crossing because it was conducting a limited operation into it. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, stated that the operation was necessary to destroy the remaining battalions of Hamas and its military infrastructure.
On Monday, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the deaths of civilians were a tragic accident and on Tuesday, the Israeli military insisted that the bombs it had used were too small to cause a fire of that size.
The Israeli official said on Monday that an initial investigation had found that the strike may have unintentionally exploded a flammable substance at the site. Eyewitnesses described intense fires in the aftermath of the strike.
Military drone footage of the attack, reviewed by The New York Times, showed the munition striking an area housing several large cabinlike structures and parked cars.
Israeli airstrike attacks on the Kerem Shalom crossing point: State of the art in the Gaza war, and the threat to Israel
The President warned Israel against launching a big offensive into Rafah after Hamas fired rockets at the Kerem Shalom crossing point.
An official in the Biden administration told NPR Tuesday that while the deadly airstrike in Rafah over the weekend left the U.S. “deeply concerned,” it was not an example of the kind of military operation that Biden has said would be unacceptable.
Two employees of the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah, one of the last hospitals functioning there, were killed at the gate by an Israeli airstrike, the health ministry said on Monday. The hospital is closing down as a result.
One Palestinian man in Rafah who witnessed the aftermath told NPR the scene was a charnel house, with one child decapitated and another eviscerated by shrapnel.
As international outrage over the operation in the area grew and a camp for displaced Palestinians was hit by an airstrike, Israel’s military said it was pressing on with its ground assault.
One witness told NPR that Israeli tanks had been spotted in western Rafah, on the opposite side of the city from where the offensive began on May 6. The Reuters news agency also reported that tanks had been seen in the center of the city, where some 1.4 million people had been sheltering before the offensive began, having fled there to escape fighting in the rest of the tiny coastal territory.
The battle for Rafah is being fought on Gaza’s border with Egypt, and Cairo has warned that any spillover of the conflict onto its own territory could undermine its peace treaty with Israel — long a linchpin of stability in the region.
Humanitarian groups in Gaza warn of a crisis after the fighting cut off main aid routes and aid warehouses have begun to run out of food.
“Israeli Troops Keep Up Assault on Rafah after Condemnation of Deadly Strike” Revisited
Israeli jets had fired the “smallest munitions” that they could use, he said, insisting that “our munitions alone could not have ignited a fire of this size.” The claims could not be independently verified.
The Israeli military’s spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told a news conference that an investigation was examining “all possibilities” to determine what had caused the fire
Two small warheads were used in the strike. We’re talking about munition with 17 kilos of explosive material. This is a very small munition that our jets can use. Following this strike, a large fire ignited for reasons that are still being investigated. Our munition alone could not have ignited a fire of this size. We couldn’t have started a fire of this size with our munition. We are looking to discover what caused the large fire to start. We are operating in Rafah in a very targeted and precise way. There are still hostages in Rafah, and we need to make sure that we do everything we can to bring our hostages back home.
In calling for a thorough investigation, Britain’s foreign secretary praised the “deeply distressing” scenes from Rafah over the weekend, which included charred bodies in the ruins of the camp.
The squarking of the anti-Semitia sector in al-Mawasi – the wake of a deadly strike
Those statements, however, did little to quell a chorus of voices demanding accountability and a halt to the fighting, which came amid reports of another deadly strike in nearby Al-Mawasi on Tuesday.