Palestinian doctors have said that an Israeli airstrike killed at least 22 people on Sunday. It hit tents where people had to leave their homes in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Many other people were stuck under the rubble.
The strike happened two days after the International Court of Justice told Israel to stop its military attack in Rafah. Many people from Gaza were staying in Rafah before Israel’s recent invasion. Many people are still there while many others have left.
Video from the area showed a lot of damage and fire. There was no specific information about the target right away. The Israeli army said they did not know anything was happening in the area. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Rafah on Sunday to learn about the ongoing military operations there.
A person from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said more people might die as they keep looking for and rescuing people in Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan area. It’s about two kilometers northwest of the city center.
The society said Israel marked the location as a “humanitarian area. ” The neighborhood is part of the areas Israel’s military told people to leave earlier this month.
The airstrike happened a few hours after Hamas fired many rockets from Gaza. The rockets set off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv, which hadn’t happened in a long time. This shows that Hamas is strong and determined, even after Israel’s big attack that has been going on for seven months.
There haven’t been any reports of people getting hurt in the first rocket attack from Gaza in a long time. Hamas’ soldiers said they did the attack. Palestinian fighters have sometimes shot rockets and mortars at towns near the Gaza border. Today, the military part of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization said it shot rockets at nearby towns.
The Israeli army said that eight rockets came from Rafah and crossed into Israel. The military stopped some of the missiles, according to a military spokesperson. Daniel Hagari said that the launcher in Rafah was broken.
On Sunday, trucks with aid went into Gaza from southern Israel using a new agreement. This allows them to avoid the Rafah crossing with Egypt because Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian side of it earlier this month. But it wasn’t right away known if charity groups could get to the help because of the fighting.
Egypt does not want to open the Rafah crossing until Palestinians have control of the Gaza side again. It decided to temporarily send traffic through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, which is Gaza’s main cargo terminal, after a talk between US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.
The Kerem Shalom crossing has been mostly closed because of Israel’s attack in Rafah. Israel said it let hundreds of trucks in, but the United Nations says it’s too dangerous to get the aid.
The UN leader’s spokesperson said that because the humanitarian operation is close to failing, the Israeli authorities need to help bring in and deliver aid from Egypt safely at Kerem Shalom.
The fight between Israel and Hamas has caused the death of almost 36,000 Palestinians, as reported by Gaza’s Health Ministry. They have not separated civilians and fighters in their count. The Health Ministry reported that 81 people who were killed by Israeli attacks had been taken to hospitals in the last day. Israel says that civilians are dying because Hamas is hiding in neighborhoods where many people live.
About 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have left their homes. There are lots of people who are very hungry and United Nations officials are saying that some parts of the area are experiencing famine.
Hamas started the war by attacking Israel on October 7. They killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Hamas still has about 100 people captive and the bodies of around 30 others, even though most of the others were let go during a break in fighting last year.
Israel’s leader says the country needs to capture Rafah to defeat Hamas completely. Hamas has moved to other parts of Gaza, where the military has been active. Netanyahu wants to stop them.
The fighting has made things more tense in the part of the West Bank that is controlled by Israel. The Palestinian authorities said that Israeli soldiers killed a 14-year-old boy near the town of Saeer in the southern West Bank on Sunday. The Israeli army said they had to shoot and kill a Palestinian man because he tried to stab Israeli soldiers at Beit Einun Junction.
Aid is having a hard time reaching the southern part of Gaza.
Southern Gaza hasn’t been getting much help since Israel went into Rafah on May 6. Since then, more than one million Palestinians, many of whom were already forced to leave their homes, have left the city.
Egypt’s government-controlled Al-Qahera TV showed video of trucks going into Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Khaled Zayed, the leader of the Egyptian Red Crescent in Sinai, said that on Sunday, they planned to send 200 trucks with aid and four trucks with fuel to Kerem Shalom from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing.
Northern Gaza is getting help from Israel through two roads that Israel made open because people all over the world were very upset after Israeli attacks killed seven people who were helping with aid in April.
Every day, a few dozen trucks come into Gaza using a pier that the US made. But the pier can’t handle as many trucks as officials had hoped for – they wanted 150 trucks a day. Charitable groups say they need 600 trucks every day.
Israel arrests a man for threatening to start a rebellion.
Israel’s army caught someone they think made a video where a person dressed as a soldier talks about rebelling. In the video, the man said many soldiers were prepared to ignore the defence minister’s idea that Palestinians should rule Gaza after the war. They promised to only be loyal to Netanyahu.
Hagari, who speaks for the military, said that the man is no longer doing reserve duty. The man’s name has not been made public. It was unclear where or when the video was recorded. The prime minister’s office said they don’t support any kind of military disobedience.