Zionist airstrikes kill dozens of displaced Gazans in Rafah

According to the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Government Media Office in Gaza, more than 30 displaced Palestinians have been killed and dozens of others injured in the regime’s bombings of more than 10 displacement centers set up by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said in a statement that Israeli strikes “claimed the lives of 35 martyrs and left dozens injured, most of them children and women.”

“The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance crews are transporting a large number of martyrs and injured individuals following the occupation’s targeting of the displaced persons’ tents near the United Nations headquarters northwest of Rafah,” the Red Crescent said in a post on X social media platform.

It added that “this location was designated by the Israeli occupation forces as a humanitarian area.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office also confirmed that Israeli warplanes targeted areas, which the regime itself had already identified as “safe” in Rafah.

“The occupation has committed a horrific massacre by deliberately bombing the displacement center shelters northwest of Rafah.… This massacre is a message to the international community that the Holocaust against the Palestinians continues and that the massacres against the displaced [people] continue,” the media office added in its statement.

Gaza’s Civil Defense, for its part, said Israeli strikes killed and wounded at least 50 people in the area, where it said 100,000 displaced people live.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement that one of its field hospitals was receiving an “influx of casualties seeking care for injuries and burns” and reported that other hospitals were also receiving a large number of patients.

“Our teams are doing their best to save lives,” the ICRC added.

Israel launched its brutal war on Gaza on October 7 last year after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a historic operation against the usurping regime in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Since the start of the aggression, the Israeli regime has been committing war crimes in Gaza, killing at least 35,984 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 80,643 others.

Following Israel’s latest crime in southern Gaza, the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, issued a statement strongly condemning the massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israel.

The movement said the bombarded area is “crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people and the criminal army had declared it a safe area, which resulted in the martyrdom and injury of dozens of citizens, most of whom are women and children.”

Hamas added, “We hold the American administration and President [Joe] Biden in particular fully responsible for this massacre, which the Zionist entity would not have committed without American support and green light.”

It also demanded international pressure on the occupying regime “to stop this massacre and the shedding of the blood of innocent civilians, including children, women and the elderly.”

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad also issued a statement, saying that the bombing of displaced people’s tents in Rafah is a new war crime, which has been added to the series of genocidal war crimes committed by the Zionist enemy.

“The targeting of civilians in the displaced people’s camps in Rafah confirms the depth of the military failure the enemy has suffered in the field, prompting it to compensate by targeting civilians and furthering the bloodshed of Palestinians to satisfy the bloodthirsty [Israeli officials] in Tel Aviv.”

The Islamic Jihad added, “The continuation of the enemy’s crimes in the Gaza Strip is a result of the cover provided by the US administration, the [pro-Israeli] positions of some European governments, and the weak stances taken by Arab regimes.”

It noted that Israel’s crimes in Gaza also show its disregard for all international humanitarian and ethical norms, while “exposing the inability of international institutions to enforce their resolutions” on Israel.

Meanwhile, the Political Bureau of Yemen’s Ansarullah movement strongly condemned “the heinous Israeli massacre” of the displaced people in southern Gaza.

It said, “The Israeli holocaust against the displaced in Gaza reflects the level of brutality of the enemy and its level of criminality and ugliness.”

The movement added, “The massacre of civilians once again proves the enemy’s failure, and proves to the world that the [occupying] entity does not care about international laws and does not pay any attention to the decisions of the [International] Court of Justice.”

Yemen’s Ansarullah also held “the United States fully responsible for the Rafah massacre and other massacres,” while calling on the international community to put pressure on Israel to withdraw its forces from the Rafah crossing, open the crossing, and bring in aid.”