Mohammad Abu Al Subeh, a displaced Palestinian man who survived the strike, said as he was lying in bed in the evening when he saw “rockets fired down at us.”
“It shook the earth like an earthquake,” Abu Al Subeh, who fled his home in Nuseirat some five months ago, told CNN. He had to escape through the window of his makeshift house in the desert area where the camp is located. “I came here based on the leaflet that was dropped (by Israel) saying go to this humanitarian area,” he said. “It’s just civilians here.”
Abu Nidal Al Attar, another displaced Palestinian who witnessed the attack, told CNN: “We were sitting as normal people do” when they suddenly saw strikes and fire. “We went to see, and they were pulling out burned people.”
Hamas called the attack “a horrific war crime” and “terrible massacre.”
International outrage
International condemnation was swift, with UN agencies, aid groups and governments calling on Israel to respect the ICJ ruling and halt its Rafah operation.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday condemned the airstrike. “There is no safe place in Gaza. This horror must stop,” he said in a post on X.
“Despite the ICJ binding ruling, Israel struck Rafah and Hamas fired rockets to Israel,” the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, wrote Monday on X. On Monday, in a meeting with Arab leaders to discuss Gaza and the Middle, Borrell said that “what we have seen in the immediate hours is that Israel continues the military action that it has been asked to stop.”
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it was “horrified by this deadly event, which shows once again that nowhere is safe.” The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said “Gaza is hell on earth,” referring to the Rafah attack.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged” and called for an “immediate ceasefire.”
Critics have pushed back on Israel’s claims. Already worried about an intensifying war right on its border with Gaza, Egypt on Monday condemned Israel’s strike on Rafah, calling on the Jewish state to implement the ICJ ruling of “halting military operations” in Rafah and to “comply with its responsibilities as an occupying power”.
A mediator in the war, Egypt is set to host another round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas on Tuesday. Qatar, another key mediator, said Israel’s strike could “hinder” ongoing negotiations, and called the attack a “serious violation of international law.”
Over a million Palestinians had been sheltering in Rafah before Israel began its operations there, having fled there from other areas of Gaza after Israel began its military campaign in the territory.
Israel has said it had ordered civilians to leave some areas of Rafah, but many remain there, sheltering in what Israel designated as “safe zones.”
More than 800,000 people have fled Rafah since May 6, according to UN figures.
Israel has vowed to press on with its Rafah operation despite international outrage and a US warning not to proceed. In response to the ICJ ruling last week, Israel said it “has not and will not conduct military actions in the Rafah area which may inflict on the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
Source:CNN
