Israel intensifies attacks on Rafah
At least 34,844 Palestinians were killed and 78,404 injured in Israel's military offensive in Gaza since October 7
Israel in its ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip, has intensified attacks on Rafah, where more than 1.5 million civilian Palestinians including the displaced, are crowded into a narrow sliver of land.
On Wednesday, Israel stepped up airstrikes on Rafah overnight after saying it would evacuate civilians from the southern Gazan city and launch an all-out assault despite allies’ warnings this could cause mass casualties.
On Day 215 of Israel’s Gaza invasion, the world silently watches as the Israeli military continues to attack parts of eastern Rafah city overnight.
The intensified attacks are aiding Israel in clearing the majority of the residential homes and farmlands.
At least 23 Palestinians, including six women and five children, were killed in overnight strikes in Rafah by the Israeli occupation forces, according to hospital records cited by Reuters.
Israel continues the bombardment in the overcrowded Gaza city of Rafah, where it has launched a ground incursion, as talks resume in Cairo aimed at agreeing the terms of a truce in the seven-month conflict, AFP reported on Wednesday.
After a night of heavy Israeli strikes and shelling across Gaza, AFPTV footage showed Palestinians scrambling in the dark to pull survivors, bloodied and caked in dust, out from under the rubble of a Rafah building.
Heartbreaking images from Rafah are arriving on social media.
While fleeing Rafah under Israeli fire
The kid: “Where to go?”
His mom: “Go ahead. The land of God is wide.”#RafahUnderAttack #Rafah pic.twitter.com/h5QqRG1Ogw— Awais (@AwaisKhanShafiq) May 8, 2024
🚨The Israeli army bombed the displaced people's tents in #Rafah this morning as if they were playing PUBG!
Barbaric, barbaric, barbaric ‼️#GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/eQlEjjiotg
— Nour Naim| نُور (@NourNaim88) May 8, 2024
Israel launched airstrikes in the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah on Tuesday amid talks held in the Egyptian capital of Cairo aimed at achieving a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. https://t.co/JAOb2cN82t #MideastInPictures pic.twitter.com/XC32spFglb
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) May 8, 2024
At least 34,844 Palestinians were killed and 78,404 injured in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since October 7, said Gaza’s health ministry in a statement on Wednesday.
On the other hand, the United Arab Emirates strongly condemned Israel’s takeover of the Rafah border crossing on the Palestinian side and also warned of the consequences of military escalation.
Reacting to the conditions in Rafah, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the situation in Gaza was “moving in the wrong direction” after Israel’s assault on Rafah — the last place for refugees to take shelter.
Josep Borrell, EU’s foreign policy chief, said that “despite all the requests of the international community” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Rafah, the assault had gone ahead.
“I am afraid that this is going to cause, again, a lot of casualties,” Borrell said.
“There are no safe zones in Gaza,” he added.
Avril Benoit, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said, “Israel’s military onslaught against Rafah, where more than 1.5 million civilians are crowded into a narrow sliver of land”, risks turning the former refuge for civilians into the graveyard.”
Benoit said in a post on social media that “a further military escalation in Rafah would be a direct attack on a trapped population”, and Israel must immediately halt its plans.
A military escalation in Rafah “would crush an already fragile humanitarian response at a time when health and humanitarian needs are soaring”, Benoit added.
“For seven months, we have witnessed the indiscriminate killing of civilians, attacks on aid workers – including our own staff – the destruction of medical facilities, and the obstruction of lifesaving assistance,” the MSF chief said in a statement.
“We cannot imagine what a further escalation of this conflict would mean for people who have already suffered so much in this war without rules”.
