Around 100 killed in Israeli strikes in Rafah: Hamas
Israel urged ‘to stop and think seriously’ before further action
Predawn Israeli strikes in the southern Gaza city of Rafah killed “around 100” people on Monday, the Health Ministry in Gaza said in a statement.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron on Monday urged Israel to “stop” its latest military action in war-torn Gaza’s Rafah, after deadly overnight bombing and fears of a looming ground incursion.
“We are very concerned about the situation and we want Israel to stop and think seriously before it takes any further action,” Cameron told reporters during a visit to Scotland.
“We think it is impossible to see how you can fight a war amongst these people. There’s nowhere for them to go.”
“But above all, what we want is an immediate pause in the fighting and we want that pause to lead to a cease-fire.”
Israel’s military said airstrikes had coincided with the raid to allow its forces to be extracted.
People in Rafah said two mosques and several residential buildings were hit in more than an hour of strikes by Israeli warplanes, tanks and ships, causing widespread panic among Gazans woken from their sleep.
Some feared Israel had begun a long-expected ground offensive in the city, where more than a million people displaced by Israel’s war on Hamas are sheltering with nowhere else to go.
Meanwhile, Egypt has sent about 40 tanks and armored personnel carriers to northeastern Sinai within the past two weeks as part of a series of measures to bolster security on its border with Gaza, two Egyptian security sources said.
The deployment took place ahead of the expansion of Israeli military operations around Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where much of its population has sought safety, sharpening Egyptian fears that Palestinians could be forced en masse out of the enclave.
Israeli warplanes struck Rafah, which adjoins the border, on Friday.
After Israel began drawing up an evacuation plan to allow it to defeat Hamas in the area, the UN said Palestinian civilians in Rafah in the Gaza Strip need to be protected, but there should not be any forced mass displacement.
“We’re extremely worried about the fate of civilians in Rafah,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country’s military on Friday to draw up a dual plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah in southern Gaza and to defeat the last Hamas fighters there.
More than half Gaza’s 2.3 million people are sheltering in Rafah, many of them penned up against the border fence with Egypt and living in makeshift tents.
Since the Gaza war erupted on Oct. 7, Egypt constructed a concrete border wall that reaches six metros into the ground and is topped with barbed wire. It has also built berms and enhanced surveillance at border posts, the security sources said.