June 22, 2024
The Israel
Defense Forces on Friday yet again shelled tents of displaced Palestinians near
the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 25 and wounding another
50, local health and emergency officials said.
“According to
Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for Civil Defense first responders in Rafah,
witnesses told rescue workers about the shelling at two locations in a coastal
area that has become filled with tents,” The Associated Press reported.
“The locations
of the attacks provided by the Civil Defense appear to be just outside an
Israeli-designated safe zone,” the news agency noted. “The Israeli military
said the episode was under review but that ‘there is no indication that a
strike was carried out by the IDF’ inside the safe zone, using an acronym for
the Israeli forces. It did not offer details on the episode or say what the
intended targets might have been.”
Don’t miss a
beat
The AP shared
firsthand accounts from survivors of the Al-Mawasi attack, as did Al Jazeera:
“We had just eaten and were about to
sleep and take some rest, and the next we knew was the sound of resounding
explosions destroying our places! We find ourselves alone not knowing what to
do. We still can’t process what happened!” a survivor told Al Jazeera.
“Oh Lord, look at us, oh world, see our condition.
There are a lot of injured still inside. We are no longer able to do anything.
What is happening to us? The fire is consuming us from every direction.”
Another survivor
said that “today, before the afternoon, a bomb was thrown near the Red Cross.
My husband went out after hearing the sound of the explosion. The second bomb
was near the Red Cross building. All the young men went there because some
people were injured.”
“My husband
went, and I looked for him but couldn’t find him,” the witness added. “Everyone
was forced to flee in their clothes without taking their belongings. Some
people took us with them in their car. We don’t know what happened after that.”
The
International Committee of the Red Cross in Israel and the occupied territories
announced on social media Friday that “the ICRC office—which is surrounded by
hundreds of displaced civilians living in tents—was damaged by nearby shelling
in Gaza” that the group said “caused a mass casualty influx” at its hospital,
which received 22 of those killed and 45 of the people injured.
The Friday
attack follows a pair of bombings that killed dozens of Palestinians and
injured hundreds in and near Rafah late last month. Like with the attacks last
month — which analyses suggest involved U.S.-supplied weaponry — there were
swift calls for the Biden administration and other governments to cut off
support for the Israeli assault on the Hamas-governed enclave.
“Israel has run
out of buildings, schools, and hospitals to bomb and is once again targeting
displaced civilians in tents,” said AJ+ senior editor Kareem Yasin. “Any
Western government excusing or denying these intentional attacks is complicit.”
The Israeli war
on Gaza — launched after the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel — has killed
more than 37,430 Palestinians and injured over 85,650 others, according to
local officials. Survivors face devastated civilian infrastructure and limited
food, water, shelter, and medical supplies, as Israel limits the flow of
humanitarian aid.
South Africa is
leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice
and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest
warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister
Yoav Gallant as well as three Hamas leaders.
“They’ve done it
again,” U.S.-based policy analyst Omar Baddar said of Israel Friday. “Nearly
every day for the past 260 days, Israel has committed another massacre against
Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Fathers, mothers, siblings, children, their
bodies burnt or torn apart, while our government gives more weapons for these
atrocities.”
Even before
October 7, the United States gave Israel billions of dollars in annual military
aid — but such support has increased during the war. U.S. President Joe Biden
previously called an Israeli assault on Rarah a “red line,” but as the IDF has
killed Palestinians in and around the Gaza city, the White House has signaled
that his boundary has not yet been crossed.
Biden “must stop
sending weapons to Israel,” Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on
Race, Power, and Political Economy, declared in response to the Friday attack.
“This is egregious. “
No comments:
Post a Comment