‘The attack by the terrorist enemy army on the city of Rafah is a compounded crime, a deepening of genocide and forced displacement attempts waged against our Palestinian people,’ Hamas said in a statement on Monday.
Over 100 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed and nearly 230 others wounded in Israel’s extensive air raids and artillery strikes on Rafah overnight on Sunday and into Monday, dozens of people are also trapped under the rubble.
In the statement, Hamas said the ‘terrorist Netanyahu government and his Nazi army’ blatantly disregard the decisions of the International Court of Justice issued two weeks ago, which prescribed urgent measures including stopping any steps that could be considered acts of genocide.’
Hamas holds the US administration of President Joe Biden along with the Tel Aviv regime fully responsible for the massacre in Rafah, as Washington gave Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light for the strike.
The US provides Israel with money, weapons, and political cover to continue the war of genocide and massacres against the Palestinians, it emphasised.
‘We call on the League of Arab States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the United Nations Security Council to take immediate and serious action to stop the Zionist aggression and the ongoing genocide crimes against unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip,’ the statement read.
Meanwhile, the director of Kuwait Hospital in Rafah, Suhaib al-Hams, said the Israeli army used internationally prohibited incendiary missiles in its raids on Rafah, resulting in injuries from amputations, brain injuries, and burns.
‘We disbelieve in the world’s democracy, its false freedoms, and its false justice.
‘Its duplicity has been revealed, and its disgrace has been exposed,’ he added.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society also said the number of those killed in the Rafah massacre is likely to rise because there are still many people still missing under the rubble.
It emphasised that there were not enough ambulances to rescue the wounded after the bloody night in Rafah.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement condemned Israel’s attack on Rafah, saying the regime, having received unwavering support from the United States, violated the entire ‘international norms and conventions’ and showed its ‘systematic war of extermination’ against Palestinians.
The popular Gaza-based resistance movement said in a statement on Monday that the Israeli occupation’s insistence on perpetrating crimes, especially the horrific massacre in Rafah on Sunday night, proves the regime’s continuation of its ‘systematic war of extermination’ against Palestinians.
‘This insistence proves that the usurping entity is flouting all international norms and conventions, especially the decisions of the International Court of Justice, the resolutions of the United Nations, and the … international community,’ the statement said, adding:.
‘These crimes confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Nazi and criminal entity does not value international public opinion or its allies.’
Islamic Jihad also warned the international community and the Arab world, saying: ‘The Zionist attack on Rafah aims to displace our people from their land and liquidate the Palestinian cause, which threatens Arab and Islamic national security.’
The resistance movement also said the administration of US President Joe Biden must be held accountable for the continuation of the Israeli was against Palestinians, and for providing the regime with military and financial support, political cover, and impunity from accountability and punishment.
In the early hours of Monday, the Israeli regime launched an all-out offensive on Rafah by conducting extensive air raids and artillery strikes on the densely-populated city.
Defying international warnings, the onslaught came when more than one million people, over five times Rafah’s usual population, have fled to the city amid Israel’s months-long bombardment campaign on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel launched the US-backed war on Gaza on October 7th after Palestinian resistance groups waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against the Palestinians.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 28,176 individuals, the majority of whom are innocent civilians, and injured more than 68,000 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under ‘complete siege’ by Israel.
Israel’s deadly campaign in Gaza has brought ‘unprecedented’ levels of ‘near famine-like conditions’ in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Virtually 550,000 people are currently facing catastrophic food insecurity levels, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said.
FAO Deputy Director General Beth Bechdol said on Monday all the 2.2 million people in Gaza are in the top three hunger categories, from level three, which is considered an emergency, to level five – catastrophe.
‘We are seeing more and more people essentially on the brink of and moving into famine-like conditions every day,’ she said.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) rates hunger levels from one to five.
‘At this stage, probably about 25 per cent of that 2.2 million are in that top-level IPC five category,’ Bechdol warned.
International agencies have repeatedly sounded the alarm that Gaza is starving.
UN special rapporteurs say one in four people are starving and nine out of ten families in some areas spend at least a day and night without food.
They say every single person in Gaza is hungry as Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people.
There is no estimate of how many Palestinians have died directly or indirectly of hunger since Israel launched the war on October 7th, 2023 as the few remaining hospitals in Gaza typically only record deaths from Israeli attacks.
The vast majority of the Gaza population has been displaced and the medical system lies in ruins, meaning many deaths go uncounted.
The world’s major financial institutions are raising the alarm over the global economic repercussions of Israel’s ongoing US-backed hostilities in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Speaking at the World Governments Summit, an annual gathering of business and political leaders in Dubai on Monday, the International Monetary Fund warned Israel’s bloody campaign as well as the increasing tensions in the Red Sea pose significant threats to the global economy.
Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF managing director, said: ‘I fear most longevity of the conflict because, if it goes on and on, the risk of spillover goes up.’
Georgieva said attacks by the Yemeni armed forces against Israel-linked ships in the Red Sea could push the conflict into other regions. ‘Right now we see a risk of spillover in the Suez Canal.’
In addition to the IMF, the World Bank has said the Israeli campaign in Gaza is one of the top challenges to the global economic outlook.
The World Bank’s President Ajay Banga echoed Georgieva’s concerns.
In January, the United Nations announced that the volume of commercial traffic passing through the Suez Canal had dropped by over 40 per cent in the previous two months, and the Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle.
They say they won’t stop targeting Israel’s maritime interests in the region unless the regime ends the war.
