In perhaps the most horrific attack yet on Rafah since Israel announced its ground invasion was beginning, Israeli Defense Forces ran an aerial strafing run overnight on Sunday targeting a tent city in Tel al-Sultan.
The airstrike came just two days after the United Nations’ International Court of Justice ordered Israel to shut down all military operations in Rafah effective immediately. It was also only a week after the International Criminal Court charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, along with the three top Hamas officials, with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza war.
That tent city, located in northwestern Rafah, is one of several refugee displacement camps the Israeli government had authorized and even helped establish for Palestinians ordered to flee northern Gaza early in the post-October 7 phase of Israeli’s genocidal war. Palestinians fleeing for their lives from the mass destruction and slaughter in northern Gaza came there with the promise that they would be safe, and where they would have access to food and water for the foreseeable future.
After Israeli military forces made the announcement that they were now moving on to the last phase of the war in Gaza, they ordered the estimated approximately 1.4 to 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into camps like the one at Tel al-Sultan to flee the area. They were directed to head to a new allegedly protected refugee camp located this at al-Mawasi, not far from Gaza’s border with the Mediterranean Sea.
The first phase of those evacuation orders went out on May 6, with others following since then. At this point it is estimated over 1 million Palestinians have left Rafah.
Israel has yet to give the final order to those still left in certain sections of Rafah. That is why the Tel al-Sultan camp was still fully occupied as of this weekend. Many there were reportedly readying their departure after the previous orders to evacuate first eastern, then central, Rafah were given.
The IDF bombing and strafing runs at the camp came without warning in the darkness Sunday. The Israeli Air Force, which the government constantly praises for its skill in precision targeting exactly where it wishes to kill and blow things up, launched waves of intense shelling at the camp. As the explosive armaments struck, the dark night was shattered by thunderous booms and bright flashes in multiple areas across the refugee compound.
Tents in one part of the encampment quickly burst into flames just as many were sleeping. Besides those immediately murdered in the attacks, shrapnel spread everywhere. So too did the fires set off by the bombing run, which whipped across the encampment so swiftly people near the blasts who had survived the direct attacks were caught in the flames and burned alive. People ran screaming from the blast zones, calling for help to save the fallen family members near them and attempting to save themselves, despite the fact that it was clear by then that nowhere in that camp was anyone safe any longer.
The fires continued to spread long after the attack was over. With no water available to put it out, those present had no choice but to get away and wait.
Those who rushed to the camp to help immediately after the fire said the devastation was widespread and frightening.
“We pulled out children who were in pieces,” one of those told the press afterwards about what happened. “We pulled out young and elderly people.”
As the sun came up, the camp was still smoldering with smoke rising around the blackened disaster site.
When families, rescue crews, and some medical support personnel finally sifted through the attack zone to see what at happened yesterday, they found people blown to pieces, others blackened beyond recognition, and others who died from lack of treatment for wounds needing emergency care which was unavailable in time. Many who survived lost hands, feet, or limbs in the blasts.
The wounded were quickly rushed to multiple nearby hospitals. A field hospital nearby operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross was quickly inundated.
According to Gaza health authorities, at least 45 people died at the camp, with many more wounded. Roughly half those killed were women and children.
Eyewitness accounts of the site described what they saw there as “unreal”. They found “dismembered bodies, charred bodies, children without heads, bodies as if they had melted.”
Doctors Without Borders set up an emergency trauma center by the refugee site within hours after the strikes. The humanitarian organization reports having treated over 180 people for burns, wounds from pieces of the munitions which tore through people’s flesh, and those with body parts severed but who could still be saved.
Yesterday after the attack, the Israeli Defense Forces issued an initial statement about the airstrikes. Those first statements mentioned nothing of the obscene carnage and mass murder of innocent refugees at Tel al-Sultan.
“The attack was carried out against terrorists who are a target for attack, in accordance with international law, using precision munitions, and based on intelligence indicating the use of the area by Hamas terrorists,” it said on the social media platform X.
It also congratulated itself on having killed two Hamas commanders in the raid.
Israel mentioned nothing in those initial statements about the obscene carnage and mass murder of innocent refugees at Tel al-Sultan.
That came later, only after still and video images and interviews from the area revealed how very wrong the attack had gone.
During a speech yesterday to the Knesset plenum, a subset of the parliament which amounts to its most senior leadership group, Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu said about the deaths and injuries caused by the airstrike that “something unfortunately went tragically wrong”.’
“We are investigating the incident and will reach conclusions, because this is our policy,” he continued.
Despite this “tragic mistake”, the prime minister went on, saying neither this incident nor anything else would cause him to back down in his plans to move forward with his reckless mission to finish the war in Gaza as he has pledged all along.
“Those who say they are exhausted that they are not ready or cannot withstand the pressure,” Netanyahu told his audience, “should hold up the white flag of defeat. I will not wave that kind of flag. I will continue to fight until we wave the flag of victory.”
Leaders around the world almost unilaterally responded with disbelief and anger over the shelling of the Rafah refugee camp on Sunday.
“I strongly condemn Israel’s actions which killed scores of innocent civilians who were only seeking shelter from this deadly conflict,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres via the social media platform X. “There is no safe place in Gaza. This horror must stop.”
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths harshly criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu for attempting to underplay the grotesque savagery – and inhumanity – of the IDF airstrikes, calling the aerial assault an “entirely unacceptable attack”.
"Whether the attack was a war crime or a 'tragic mistake' for the people of Gaza, there is no debate. What happened last night was the latest – and possibly most cruel – abomination," Griffiths said. "To call it ‘a mistake’ is a message that means nothing for those killed, those grieving, and those trying to save lives.”
Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Israel’s slaughter at the camp site in Rafah a “deliberate bombardment”, and that it was critical now for Israel to immediately “implement the measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concerning an immediate cessation of military operations” in Rafah.
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin called the attack “barbaric”.
“One cannot bomb an area like that without shocking consequences in terms of innocent children and civilians,” he added. We would urge Israel to stop, to stop now, in terms of the military operation in Rafah.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged” by what Israel had just done.
Philip Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said, “The images from last night are a testament to how Rafah has turned into hell on earth.”
In Türkiye, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a strong condemnation of the airstrike.
“We will do everything possible to hold these barbarians and murderers accountable who have nothing to do with humanity,” he vowed.
Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares, said the tragedy was unfortunately just “one more day with innocent Palestinian civilians being killed”. That it happened just two days after the ICJ ordered Israel to cease all military actions in Rafah was even more grave, he added.
Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide of Norway called what happened a “material breach of the decision of the highest court of the world”, referring again to the ICJ ruling issued on May 24.
“We’ve had a compulsory order from the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to stop its attack in Rafah,” he said. “It is compulsory. It’s binding.”
On the other side of the world, as of now the U.S. has not issued any formal statement about the airstrike.
The closest to any response came from a spokesperson for the State Department who spoke to members of the press under conditions of anonymity. That individual first noted that the U.S. supported Israel’s continued “right to go after Hamas” and noted that two Hamas leaders were supposedly killed in the airstrike.
Regarding the mass civilian casualties which occurred, the spokesperson said only that, “Israel must take every precaution to protect civilians.”
The White House has provided no other official comment about this deadly disaster.