Gazans fear Israeli attack
GAZA - Israeli forces shelled the outskirts of Rafah on Friday, the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where hundreds of thousands displaced people, penned against the border fence, feared a new assault with nowhere left to flee.
The United States also began retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria, the US military said, after a drone attack in Jordan this week killed three US troops, developments likely to increase concern about spiralling tensions in the Middle East.
The US strikes targeted Iran-backed militants that Washington has blamed for the drone attack, the first deadly strike against US forces since the Israel-Gaza war erupted in October.
More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now homeless and crammed into Rafah on the Egyptian border.
Tens of thousands have arrived in recent days, carrying belongings in their arms and pulling children on carts, since Israeli forces last week launched one of the biggest assaults of the war to capture adjacent Khan Younis, the main southern city.
If the Israeli tanks keep coming, “we will be left with two choices: stay and die or climb the walls into Egypt,” said Emad, 55, a businessman and father of six, reached on a mobile phone chat app.
“Most of Gaza’s population are in Rafah. If the tanks storm in, it will be a massacre like never before during this war.”
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that troops would now “eliminate terror elements” in Rafah, one of the few areas not yet taken in an almost four-month-old assault.