Israel pounds Rafah refugees again as US insists IDF did not cross a line

Israel carried out more strikes in Rafah on Wednesday morning, as the United Nations met to discuss a deadly attack that sparked global outcry when photographs of charred children’s bodies highlighted the rising civilian toll of the war on Hamas.

US President Joe Biden warned Israel against launching a major military operation in the southern Gazan city, but his administration insisted on Tuesday that Israeli Defence Forces had not yet crossed its red lines.

“We have not seen them smash into Rafah,” said the US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

AFP journalists in Rafah reported new strikes hours after witnesses and a Palestinian security source said Israeli tanks had penetrated the heart of the city.

“People are currently inside their homes because anyone who moves is being shot at by Israeli drones,” resident Abdel Khatib said.

A civil defence official in Hamas-run Gaza said an Israeli strike on a displacement camp west of Rafah on Tuesday killed at least 21 people, after a similar strike over the weekend sparked global outrage and prompted the emergency UN Security Council session.

Israel’s army rejected allegations that it had carried out Tuesday’s strike in a designated humanitarian area.

“The (Israel army) did not strike in the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi,” the army said in a statement, referring to an area that had been designated for displaced people of Rafah to shelter.

On Sunday, an Israeli strike outside Rafah ignited an inferno in a displacement camp, torching makeshift shelters and killing 45 people, according to Palestinian officials.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike a “tragic accident”, while the army said it had targeted a Hamas compound and killed two senior members of the group.

The military later said the weapons it had used “could not” have caused the deadly camp blaze.

“Our munition alone could not have ignited a fire of this size,” Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli army, said ahead of Tuesday’s emergency UN session on the strike.

Algeria, which called the urgent meeting, said it had presented a draft resolution to Security Council members calling for an end to Israel’s offensive in Rafah and an “immediate ceasefire,” according to a draft text seen by AFP.

The UN Security Council was scheduled to discuss the war again on Wednesday.

Sunday evening’s strike, which medics said also wounded hundreds of civilians, drew worldwide condemnation.

The sight of the charred carnage, blackened corpses and children being rushed to hospitals led UN chief Antonio Guterres to declare that “there is no safe place in Gaza. This horror must stop.”