ISRAEL launched deadly air strikes on Rafah on Thursday, after threatening to send troops in to hunt for Hamas militants in the southern Gaza city where around 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge.
Major powers trying to find a way to end the destructive Israel-Hamas war have so far failed, but a US envoy was in Israel Thursday in the latest attempt to secure a truce deal.
International concern has spiralled over Gaza’s escalating civilian death toll and the desperate humanitarian crisis sparked by the war that followed Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel.
The war has also triggered mounting violence in the occupied West Bank, where three Palestinian gunmen opened fire on cars in a traffic jam on Thursday, killing one person and wounding eight, including a pregnant woman.
The attackers were shot dead at the scene, near a Jewish settlement east of Jerusalem.
Israeli far-right politicians quickly called for more citizens to carry weapons and for even greater restrictions on Palestinian West Bank residents, while Hamas urged an escalation in attacks.
More than four months of relentless fighting and bombardment have flattened much of Gaza and pushed its population of around 2.4 million to the brink of famine, according to the United Nations.
Alarm has centred on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians are living in crowded shelters and makeshift camps where disease threatens.
Israel has warned that, if Hamas does not free the remaining hostages held in Gaza by the start of Ramadan on March 10 or 11, it will keep fighting during the Muslim holy month, including in Rafah.
Israel has already been bombing the city, which was again hit overnight and where early Thursday AFP reporters heard multiple air strikes.
“I woke up to the sound of a huge explosion like an earthquake — fire, smoke, blasts and dust everywhere,” said Rami al-Shaer, 21, who told AFP he and others pulled wounded family members from the rubble.
Gaza’s Civil Defence agency reported “a number” of people were killed, while elsewhere in Rafah residents walked amid the rubble of the city’s al-Faruq mosque, after strikes.
