Panic mounts in Rafah over strikes
Civilians said to bear brunt amid looming offensive
JERUSALEM — The Israeli strikes lit up and thundered through the night in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah on Monday, sending pulses of fear through the 1.4 million Palestinians for whom that strip of land has become a shelter of last resort.
Israel’s army described the overnight attacks as cover for a special forces mission to rescue two Israeli-Argentine hostages. The operation succeeded, freeing Fernando Simon Merman, 60, and Luis Har, 70. The human cost was massive: At least 67 people were killed throughout the city, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
A video from a house in Rafah showed the body of a Palestinian girl, her legs shredded into ribbons of flesh; other footage from the city showed a bleeding boy being carried away, and four more children dead on hospital stretchers.
Dr. Marwan al-Hamase, director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said the hospital had received 100 injured people overnight, along with the bodies of 52 who were killed.
Maher Abu Arar, a spokesperson for the Kuwait Hospital in Rafah, said the hospital had taken in at least 15 bodies and 50 wounded people. “There were a lot of body parts,” said Abu Arar, following “successive and sudden” Israeli strikes.
One hundred and sixty-four people have been killed and another 200 wounded across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
The overnight operation in Rafah, a place that has largely been spared the widespread aerial attacks in other parts of the enclave, shocked a bone-tired population that has spent months on the move, trying to outrun the bombs.
Palestinian families are packed into houses and tents in Rafah; some newer arrivals are sleeping in the streets. They are almost entirely dependent on humanitarian relief, as aid groups warn of a looming famine, and disconnected from loved ones because cellular connections are patchy and there is no electricity to charge most phones.
“We are tired and cannot bear any more of this torture,” said Mirvat, 51, who is staying in a tent with her sister’s family in Rafah after being displaced from Gaza City. “All that I hope now is that the war ends.”
“I don’t know where to go,” she added, echoing a sentiment expressed across Gaza. “There is no place safe.” She spoke on the condition she be identified by her first name for security reasons.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, noting that half of Gaza’s population is already crammed into Rafah, said on social media that the looming Israeli campaign “would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare.”
The conflict began on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants ambushed Israeli border communities from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostage. More than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military campaign, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and much of the Strip has been has been flattened by airstrikes. Israeli authorities say Hamas is holding the bodies of around 30 people who died in captivity or who were killed on Oct. 7.
The Israel Defense Forces have said that at least 9,000 militants have been killed so far, though Hamas’s senior leaders remain at large. Israeli authorities believe they are sheltering in Rafah, alongside more than 100 remaining hostages.
Israeli officials argue they cannot complete their fight against Hamas without pursing the group into Rafah, a prospect that has alarmed the United States, Israel’s closest ally, which continues to provide the country with weapons and diplomatic support.
President Biden on Monday again warned that Israel should not proceed with a major ground offensive in Rafah without a “credible plan” to protect the people sheltering there.
Biden spoke after meeting at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan, a key figure in the push for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. It was the first face-to-face conversation between the two leaders since the Israel-Hamas war started.
“Many people there have been displaced — displaced multiple times, fleeing the violence to the north, and now they’re packed into Rafah exposed and vulnerable,” Biden said during an appearance with Abdullah. “They need to be protected.”
The visit came as Abdullah sought to shore up international support for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza that would permanently halt the fighting.
Monday’s bombardment lasted only a few hours, but its impact lingered in the houses and tents where civilians reached by phone said that they had barely slept.
“I swear to God it was an indescribable night,” said Ghada al-Kurd, 37, who is among more than 1 million people sheltering in the southern Gaza city.
“The bombing was everywhere — we were convinced that the Israeli army was invading Rafah.”
Material from The New York Times was used in this report.