The horrifying news of Sunday night’s tent attack sent shock waves throughout the globe, prompting world leaders to call for the immediate implementation of a World Court ruling to halt the Israeli regime’s invasion of the last refuge of Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli military carried out yet another heinous attack on the Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip in an overnight airstrike on a tent camp in a designated safe zone in Rafah on Sunday night, killing dozens of people.
The refugee tents that came under the attack are located in the Tal al-Sultan area, west of the city of Rafah, on the extreme south of the Gaza Strip along the border with Egypt.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said the dead included women and children, with many ‘burned alive’ inside their tents.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said the airstrike set off a fire that tore through a displacement centre in northwestern Rafah.
‘We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs … We also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly,’ said agency official Mohammad al-Mughayyir.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani condemned the brutal massacre of the displaced Palestinians, calling for a practical response and strong condemnation from the international community.
‘It is not surprising that the terrorist regime of Israel, which one day bombs the lines of refugees waiting for humanitarian aid and another day turns hospitals into blood and dust, has this time carried out a massive massacre of civilians, mostly women and children, by attacking the tents of Palestinian refugees in Rafah,’ he said.
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said that the images from Rafah are yet another testament that Gaza is ‘hell on earth.’
The Palestinian Authority condemned the regime’s military for ‘deliberately targeting civilians’.
‘The perpetration of this heinous massacre by the Israeli occupation forces is a challenge to all international legitimacy resolutions,’ the presidency said in a Monday statement.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri called the attack a ‘massacre’, saying the United States is responsible for aiding the regime.
The death toll from Israeli airstrikes against displaced people’s tents in the refugee-packed city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip has risen to at least 50 people.
Qatar said the attack is a grave violation of international laws that will aggravate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The attack could hinder mediation efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, according to a foreign ministry statement.
Qatar, alongside the US and Egypt, has been engaged in months of talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country would do ‘everything possible’ to hold ‘barbaric’ head of the regime, Benjamin Netanyahu, to account over the deadly strikes.
‘We will do everything possible to hold these barbarians and murderers accountable who have nothing to do with humanity.’
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined the chorus of condemnations, calling on the international community to intervene immediately.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is completely unacceptable.
Jordan also condemned the ‘ongoing war crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza’.
‘This act defies the rulings of the International Court of Justice and constitutes a severe violation of international law and international humanitarian law,’ the foreign ministry said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was outraged over the regime’s strikes against displaced Palestinians.
‘These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians,’ Macron said.
He called ‘for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire.’
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he was ‘horrified’ by deadly strikes on the tented camp.
Borrell said: ‘Horrified by news coming out of Rafah on Israeli strikes killing dozens of displaced persons, including small children. I condemn this in the strongest terms.’
He said that Tel Aviv must abide by the ICJ ruling to stop its offensive in Rafah.
Egypt also condemned the ‘deliberate bombardment’ of the camp, calling on Israel to ‘implement the measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’.
Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said the bombing of Rafah was ‘one more day with innocent Palestinian civilians being killed’.
The gravity of the attack, he said ‘is even larger’ because it comes after the ICJ order directing the regime to halt attacks on Rafah.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin described the attack as ‘barbaric’.
And his Norwegian counterpart Espen Barth Eide described the attacks as a ‘material breach of the decision of the highest court of the world’.
‘It is compulsory. It’s binding,’ he said referring to the ICJ order to halt the attacks on Rafah.
The African Union chair Moussa Faki Mahamat also condemned the attack, saying: ‘Israel continues to violate international law with impunity and in contempt of an ICJ ruling two days ago ordering an end to its military action in Rafah.’
The International Court of Justice last Friday ordered Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported that its crews transported a large number of people killed or injured from the camp.
Eyewitnesses said that most of the victims were women and children, while ambulance crews were unable to recover all the charred bodies.
They further stated that the indiscriminate Israeli bombardment led to the complete destruction and burning of a large number of tents in the Tal al-Sultan refugee camp.
The Government Media Office in Gaza said the attack was carried out using seven Israeli 2,000-pound (one-ton) bombs, and that fatalities were expected to rise due to the severity of the aggression.
This Israeli attack came just a day after its military forces in Jabalia, Rafah and other areas suffered losses, and a significant number of their soldiers were reported killed, wounded and captured by the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters, the armed wing of the Hamas resistance movement.
Reacting to the massacre, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas called it an ‘egregious affront’ to a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered the Israeli regime to immediately halt its offensive against the southern Gaza city.
‘In light of the horrific Zionist massacre this evening committed by the criminal occupation army against the tents of the displaced, we call on the masses of our people in the West Bank, Jerusalem, the occupied territories and abroad, to rise and march angrily against the ongoing Zionist massacre against our people in the sector,’ the Gaza-based movement said in a statement.
‘We hold the US administration and President Biden in particular fully responsible for this massacre,’ the statement noted, adding that the air strikes were ‘in complete defiance and disregard for the orders of the ICJ to halt Rafah military operations.’
The movement called on everyone, especially neighbouring Egypt, to pressure the Zionist regime into ending its occupation of the city’s Rafah crossing, which serves as the main point of entry for vital supplies into the Gaza Strip and remains blocked.
Hamas also urged the international community, the United Nations, and all relevant parties to scramble to support the Palestinian nation in the face of the Israeli massacres in the past eight months.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another resistance group fighting against Israeli forces in Gaza, said the attacks on Rafah show ‘the depths of the military failure that Israel is trying to compensate in blood’.
‘The continuation of the enemy’s crimes in the Gaza Strip is a result of the cover provided by the US administration, the positions of some European governments, and the weak stances of Arab regimes,’ the movement said in a statement.
The Fatah Al-Intifada Movement also issued a statement against the heinous massacre, saying it ‘reflects the failure of its (Israeli regime) defeated army in confronting the Palestinian resistance, which deals them blow after blow’.
‘The American administration and some European countries are partners in this massacre that targeted children, women, and the defenceless elderly,’ said the resistance group.
‘These massacres will not discourage our people from their steadfastness and rooting in their land, and resistance will remain legitimate in the face of the occupation until Palestine, all of Palestine, is liberated from the filth of this Zionist enemy. This massacre is a war crime added to the crimes of the occupation.’
The Gaza’s Government Media Office regarded the attacks as ‘a clear message from Israel and the US government to the ICJ and the global community that the massacres against displaced persons and children will continue, and that breaking international law will not stop’.
‘These ongoing massacres against civilians and displaced people unequivocally confirm that we are facing a premeditated and deliberate act of genocide. The occupation army intentionally seeks to cause the maximum number of civilian and displaced martyrs who have fled from the fire of war and killing, only to be pursued and killed by the occupation’s missiles in cold blood,’ the Media Office said.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza, in a statement, affirmed that ‘never before in history has such a large assembly of tools for mass killing been employed collectively before the eyes of the world.
‘The population is being deprived of water, food, medicine, electricity, and fuel, with infrastructure being crushed, all institutions destroyed, sanitation disrupted, epidemics spreading, the healthcare system obliterated, the siege tightened, crossings closed, and the entry of supplies and medical delegations prevented,’ it said in a statement.
