Israeli airstrikes killed at least 28 Palestinians in Rafah early Saturday, hours after Israel's prime minister said he asked the military to plan for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from the southern Gaza city ahead of a ground invasion (Pics/AFP)
Updated On: 2024-02-10 03:03 PM IST
Compiled by : ronak mastakar
Benjamin Netanyahu did not provide details or a timeline, but the announcement set off widespread panic. More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million people are packed into Rafah, many after being uprooted repeatedly by Israeli evacuation orders that now cover two-thirds of Gaza's territory. It's not clear where they could run next
Word of the invasion plans capped a week of increasingly public friction between Netanyahu and the Biden administration. US officials have said an invasion of Rafah without a plan for the civilian population would lead to disaster
Israel has carried out airstrikes in Rafah almost daily, even after telling civilians in recent weeks to seek shelter there from ground combat in the city of Khan Younis, just to the north
Overnight into Saturday, three airstrikes on homes in the Rafah area killed 28 people, according to a health official and Associated Press journalists who saw the bodies arriving at hospitals. Each strike killed multiple members of three families, including a total of 10 children, the youngest three months old
In Khan Younis, the focus of the current ground combat, Israeli forces opened fire at Nasser Hospital, the area's largest, killing at least one person and wounding several, said Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry
He said medical staff are no longer able to move between the facility's buildings because of the intense fire. He said 300 medical personnel, 450 patients and 10,000 displaced people are sheltering in the hospital
The steadily climbing Palestinian death toll now at almost 28,000 after four months of war, according to Gaza health officials has contributed to the friction between Netanyahu and Washington
Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian deaths because it fights from within civilian areas, but US officials have pushed back, calling for more surgical strikes. President Joe Biden said this week Israel's response is "over the top"
Israel says that Rafah, which borders Egypt, is the last remaining Hamas stronghold in Gaza after more than four months of war
