Israel intensifies airstrikes on Gaza’s Rafah
CAIRO — Israel stepped up airstrikes on Rafah overnight after saying it would evacuate civilians from the southern Gazan city and launch an all-out assault despite allies’ warnings this could cause mass casualties.
Medics in the besieged Palestinian enclave reported five Israeli airstrikes on Rafah early on Thursday that hit at least three houses, killing at least six people including a local journalist.
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.
Israeli warplanes had hammered the north for a second day on Wednesday, shattering weeks of comparative calm there.
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.
But the number of displaced people departing Rafah, abutting Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, remained small. Many were confused over where they should go, saying their experience over the past 200 days of war had taught them that no place was genuinely safe.