Despite warnings from partners that an all-out attack on Rafah could result in mass casualties, Israel escalated bombings on the city overnight after declaring it would evacuate people from the southern Gazan city.
Six Palestinians, including a local journalist, were killed by at least five Israeli airstrikes on Rafah early on Thursday, according to medics in the embattled Palestinian enclave. The bombs struck at least three homes.
“We are afraid of what will happen in Rafah. The level of alert is very high,” Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, told Reuters on Thursday.
“Some are leaving, they are afraid for their families but where can they go? They are not being allowed to go to the north and so are confined to a very small area.”
In the seventh month of a devastating air and ground war against the Gaza Strip’s ruling Islamist group Hamas, Israeli forces also resumed bombarding northern and central areas of the enclave, as well as east of Khan Younis in the south.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet was holding meetings “to discuss how to destroy the last vestiges, the last quarter of Hamas’ battalions, in Rafah and elsewhere,” government spokesperson David Mencer said.
He declined to say when or whether the classified forum might give a green light for a ground operation in Rafah.
The war, now in its seventh month, has killed at least 34,305 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities said on Thursday. The offensive has laid to waste much of the densely populated and widely urbanised enclave, displacing most of its 2.3 million people and leaving many with little food, water or medical care.
Israel has said it will eradicate Hamas following the rampage by gunmen from the militant group on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Iranian-backed Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction.
Escalating Israeli warnings about invading Rafah, the last refuge for around a million civilians who fled Israeli forces further north earlier in the war, have nudged some families to leave for the nearby al-Mawasi coastal area or try to make their way to points further north, residents and witnesses said.
