Israel pounds Gaza as UN Security Council meets over deadly strike

Israel carried out fresh strikes on Wednesday in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where its
forces are battling Hamas militants, after the UN Security Council met to
discuss a deadly attack that sparked global outcry.

Despite mounting concern over the civilian toll of its war on Hamas, Israel
has shown no sign of changing course and international efforts aimed at
securing a ceasefire remain stalled.

AFP journalists in Rafah reported new strikes early Wednesday, hours after
witnesses and a Palestinian security source said Israeli tanks had penetrated
the heart of the city.

“People are currently inside their homes because anyone who moves is being
shot at by Israeli drones,” resident Abdel Khatib said.

US President Joe Biden has warned Israel against launching a major military
operation in Rafah, but his administration insisted Tuesday that Israel had
not yet crossed its red lines.

“We have not seen them smash into Rafah,” said the US National Security
Council spokesman John Kirby.

A civil defence official in Hamas-run Gaza said an Israeli strike on a
displacement camp west of Rafah on Tuesday killed at least 21 people, after a
similar strike over the weekend sparked global outrage and prompted the
emergency UN Security Council session.

Israel’s army rejected allegations that it had carried out Tuesday’s strike
in a designated humanitarian area.

“The (Israel army) did not strike in the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi,” the
army said in a statement, referring to an area that had been designated for
displaced people of Rafah to shelter.

– Camp inferno –

On Sunday, an Israeli strike outside Rafah ignited an inferno in a
displacement camp, torching makeshift shelters and killing 45 people,
according to Palestinian officials.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike a “tragic
accident”, while the army said it had targeted a Hamas compound and killed
two senior members of the group.

The military later said the weapons it had used “could not” have caused the
deadly camp blaze.

“Our munition alone could not have ignited a fire of this size,” Daniel
Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli army, said ahead of Tuesday’s emergency
UN session on the strike.

Algeria, which called the urgent meeting, said it had presented a draft
resolution to Security Council members calling for an end to Israel’s
offensive in Rafah and an “immediate ceasefire,” according to a draft text
seen by AFP.

The UN Security Council was scheduled to discuss the war again on Wednesday.

Sunday evening’s strike, which medics said also wounded hundreds of
civilians, drew worldwide condemnation.

The sight of the charred carnage, blackened corpses and children being rushed
to hospitals led UN chief Antonio Guterres to declare that “there is no safe
place in Gaza. This horror must stop.”

– No ‘blind eye’ –

One million civilians have fled Rafah since Israel launched its assault on
the city in early May, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees
(UNRWA).

Nearly eight months into the deadliest Gaza war, Israel has faced ever louder
opposition, as well as cases before two Netherlands-based international
courts.

The White House said Tuesday it is not turning a “blind eye” to the plight of
Palestinian civilians, but it has no plans to change its Israel policy
following the deadly weekend strike in Rafah.

“As a result of this strike on Sunday I have no policy changes to speak to,”
Kirby told a White House briefing. “It just happened, the Israelis are going
to investigate it.”

Kirby said “this is not something that we’ve turned a blind eye to” but
added: “We have not seen them go in with large units, large numbers of
troops, in columns and formations in some sort of coordinated maneuver
against multiple targets on the ground.”

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel,
which resulted in the deaths of 1,189 people, mostly civilians, according to
an AFP tally based on the latest Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37
the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36,096 people in Gaza,
mostly civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

– Dire health toll –

On Tuesday, Gaza civil defence agency official Mohammad al-Mughayyir said 21
people were killed in an “occupation strike targeting the tents of displaced
people” in west Rafah.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza gave the same toll and said 64 people
were wounded, 10 seriously.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, said it had suspended aid deliveries into Gaza by
the sea after its temporary pier was damaged by bad weather.

The World Health Organization said Israel’s military offensive in Rafah was
already taking a dire health toll in southern Gaza, and if it continues,
“substantial” increases in deaths could be expected.

“There are currently 60 WHO trucks (in Egypt) waiting to get into Gaza,” said
Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, adding
that only three trucks with medical supplies had entered since May 7.

On the diplomatic front, Egypt has “intensified efforts to relaunch”
negotiations for a “truce and a detainee exchange deal”, the state-linked Al-
Qahera News reported. (BSS/AFP)