Blood, chaos, and screams engulfed Gaza’s southern city of Rafah once again after an Israeli airstrike hit one of its largest camps for displaced Palestinians. The death toll from the bombing in the designated “safe zone” reached 45 on Tuesday. The majority of victims were women and children.
The strike goes against a ruling by the top UN court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which ordered Israeli forces to stop their military offensive in Rafah.
Now India Today has located the site of the recent airstrike at Kuwait Peace Camp. The findings were confirmed by satellite images sourced from Planet Labs PBC which showed smoke billowing from near the camp which lies just about 300 meter north of the IDF-declared humanitarian zone.
In December last year, IDF released a map that labeled the area near the UN facility as a ‘humanitarian zone’. The Kuwait Al-Salem Camp wasn’t set up at that time. The IDF also released a map where they’ve broken Gaza’s area into numbered “blocks”. The block where Monday’s strike happened lies in block ‘2372’, while it was previously marked as a safe zone, it’s not currently in the humanitarian zone marked by IDF.
Footage of the aftermath shared on social media showed chaotic scenes.
In one video, the lifeless body of a man was seen being dragged by the legs out of the flames. “He’s dead, he’s dead,” a rescuer says before moving on to find others. In another video, a man wept as he held up the headless body of a toddler for the camera. Women shrieked in grief as children peered into the fire. A man with a bloodied face stood in apparent shock, examining his wounds with one hand, as he held an infant with blood-stained clothes in the other arm. One of the bodies pulled out of the fire was charred-stiff.
By Monday morning, the camp was in ruins with small fires still burning. Men and boys gathered around, rummaging through the burned and smoking wreckage for food and their belongings as drones hovered above. One of the structures still standing was a sign that read: “Kuwait Peace Camp 1.”
Children and women living in makeshift tents were among those killed, according to a post on X from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
The ICJ ordered Israel to “immediately halt” its military operation in Rafah, and any other action in the city, “which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The IDF said the attack was conducted based on “prior intelligence” indicating that senior officials of Hamas’ West Bank wing were present at the site.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told parliament on Monday that “something unfortunately went tragically wrong” with the airstrike. “We are investigating the incident and will reach conclusions because this is our policy,” he said.
This is not the first time that Israel has attacked a refugee camp. On May 24, the IDF also bombarded tents and refugee camps near Khan Younis which falls under the ‘humanitarian zone’. Remote sensing data from Planet Labs PBC shows over 800 camps set up in the area.
Planet images from May 18 show plumes of smoke rising from the Jabalia refugee camp. Numerous other structures used as civilian shelters have also been attacked in the past 10 days.
An Israeli airstrike on Al-Shaboura refugee camp in southern Gaza City on May 2 killed two young children and injured several other people, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza and the Kuwait Hospital in Rafah.
Worsening crisis
More than 85% of the Palestinian territory’s population had sought shelter in Rafah having fled fighting elsewhere, and a million people have been forced to move again since Israel’s ground operation began on May 6. Israeli ground troops have so far probed Rafah’s southern and eastern outskirts, rather than its overcrowded center.
Aid deliveries have slowed to a trickle, with the Rafah and nearby Kerem Shalom crossings effectively blocked. Humanitarian operations in Gaza face severe access restrictions, including the closure of key crossings, denied missions, and delays imposed by Israeli authorities.
According to Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), between May 1 and 20, 183 humanitarian aid missions in Gaza were coordinated with Israeli authorities. Of the 51 missions to northern Gaza, only 37% were facilitated, while the rest were denied access, impeded, or canceled. In southern Gaza, of the 132 missions, only half were facilitated, with the other half denied access, impeded, or canceled.
International censure of Israel’s war against Hamas has grown steadily in tandem with the death toll and humanitarian crisis in the strip. Still, Israeli officials have repeatedly said that a ground operation in Rafah, where it believes Hamas’s leadership and four battalions of fighters are camped out with Israeli hostages, is necessary for “total victory”.
Friday’s order from the ICJ is binding, but not enforceable. Several countries called on Israel to obey the 13-2 majority decision in the wake of the Rafah strike.
International response
Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas in attempts to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages, said the Rafah casualties would complicate the protracted negotiations. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported later on Monday that Hamas had decided to pull out of the latest proposed talks over what its senior leadership described as a massacre.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged” over Israel’s latest attacks. “These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians,” he said on X.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the International Court of Justice ruling must be respected.
Over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s health ministry says. Israel launched the operation after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs based in the West Bank condemned “the heinous massacre.” Egypt also condemned Israel’s “deliberate bombing of the tents of displaced people”, state media reported, describing it as a blatant violation of international law.
On Monday, the Israeli military said it was investigating reports of an exchange of fire between Israeli and Egyptian soldiers close to the Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
Egypt’s military spokesperson said that shooting near the Rafah crossing led to the killing of one person and authorities were investigating.
“On top of the hunger, on top of the starvation, the refusal to allow aid in sufficient volumes, what we witnessed last night is barbaric,” Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said.
