Israel intensified air strikes on Rafah overnight, killing at least six Palestinians, doctors said on Thursday, after the country said it would evacuate civilians from the border city of Gaza and invade it, despite warnings from allies that this could cause many victims.
In the seventh month of a devastating air and ground war against the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have also returned to shelling the northern and central areas of the enclave, as well as east of Khan Younis in the south.
Israeli warplanes bombed the north for a second day on Wednesday, breaking weeks of calm there, and Israel said it was pressing ahead with plans for an all-out attack on Hamas in Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt.
Escalating Israeli threats to invade Rafah, the last refuge for about a million civilians who fled Israel’s force further north at the start of the war, has prompted some families to leave for the nearby coastal area of al-Mawasi. , or tried to reach points further north, residents and witnesses said.
But the number of people leaving Rafah remained small, with many of them confused about where they should go, saying their experience in the past 200 days of war had taught them that nowhere was genuinely safe.
Mohammad Nasser, a 34-year-old father of three, said he had left Rafah two weeks ago and was now living in a shelter in Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, to avoid being caught by surprise by an Israeli invasion and not manage to escape.
“We run from one trap to another, looking for places that Israel considers safe before they bomb us. It’s like the game of mouse and trap,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Gaza medics and Hamas media reported five Israeli airstrikes in Rafah early Thursday that hit at least three homes, killing at least six people, including a local journalist.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian civil defense team called on the United Nations to investigate what it said were war crimes at a Gaza hospital, saying nearly 400 bodies were recovered from mass graves after soldiers Israelis left the compound in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said Palestinian authorities’ claims that its forces had buried the bodies were “unfounded”.
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