UN Security Council set to meet over deadly Rafah strike

The UN Security Council would convene Tuesday for an emergency session called by Algeria to discuss the attack. (UN)
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Updated 28 May 2024
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UN Security Council set to meet over deadly Rafah strike

  • The attack prompted a wave of international condemnation, with Palestinians and many Arab countries calling it a ‘massacre’
  • UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: ‘There is no safe place in Gaza. This horror must stop’

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: The UN Security Council was set to convene an emergency meeting Tuesday over an Israeli strike that killed dozens in a displaced persons camp in Rafah, as three European countries were slated to formally recognize a Palestinian state.

AFP journalists on the ground early Tuesday reported fresh Israeli strikes overnight in the southern Gaza border city, where an Israeli attack targeting two senior Hamas members on Sunday night sparked a fire that ripped through a displacement center, killing 45, according to Gaza health officials.

The attack prompted a wave of international condemnation, with Palestinians and many Arab countries calling it a “massacre.” Israel said it was looking into the “tragic accident.”

“There is no safe place in Gaza. This horror must stop,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres posted on social media.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths pointed to the widespread warnings of civilian deaths that circulated ahead of Israel’s incursion into Rafah, saying in a statement: “We’ve seen the consequences in last night’s utterly unacceptable attack.”

“To call it ‘a mistake’ is a message that means nothing for those killed, those grieving, and those trying to save lives,” he added.

Diplomats said the UN Security Council would convene Tuesday for an emergency session called by Algeria to discuss the attack.

The EU’s foreign policy chief said he was “horrified by news” of the strike, while French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged,” and a US National Security Council spokesperson said Israel “must take every precaution possible to protect civilians.”

The Israeli military said it was launching a probe.

Displaced Gazan Khalil Al-Bahtini was preparing to leave the impacted area, saying Monday that “last night, the tent opposite to ours was targeted.”

“We have loaded all our belongings, but we don’t know where to go.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told parliament the deaths occurred “despite our best efforts” to protect civilians.

The outcry over the strike came as Spain, Ireland and Norway were set to formally recognize a Palestinian state on Tuesday in a decision slammed by Israel as a “reward” for Hamas.

“Recognizing the state of Palestine is about justice for the Palestinian people,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Monday in Brussels.

It was also “the best guarantee of security for Israel and absolutely essential for reaching peace in the region,” he said alongside his Irish and Norwegian counterparts.

On Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he had told Spain’s consulate in Jerusalem to stop offering consular services to West Bank Palestinians from June 1 as a “preliminary punitive” measure.

Israel launched the deadly strike on Rafah late Sunday, hours after Hamas fired a barrage of rockets at the Tel Aviv area, most of which were intercepted.

Israel’s army said its aircraft “struck a Hamas compound” in the city and killed Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, senior officials for the militant group in the occupied West Bank.

Gaza’s civil defense agency said the strike ignited a fire that tore through a displacement center in northwestern Rafah near a facility of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

“We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs... We also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly,” said civil defense agency official Mohammad Al-Mughayyir.

One survivor, a woman who declined to be named, said: “We heard a loud sound and there was fire all around us. The children were screaming.”

Adding to already heightened tensions since Israel launched its Rafah ground operation, the Israeli and Egyptian militaries reported a “shooting incident” on Monday that killed one Egyptian guard in the border area between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip.

Both forces said they were investigating.

Footage from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society showed chaotic nighttime scenes of paramedics racing to the attack site and evacuating the wounded.

Mughayyir said the rescue efforts were hampered by war damage and the impact of Israel’s siege, which has led to severe shortages of fuel and “water to extinguish fires.”

The Israeli attack sparked strong protests from Egypt and Qatar, both of which have played key roles as mediators in efforts to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange.

Egypt deplored what it called the “targeting of defenseless civilians,” saying it was part of “a systematic policy aimed at widening the scope of death and destruction in the Gaza Strip to make it uninhabitable.”

Qatar condemned a “dangerous violation of international law” and voiced “concern that the bombing will complicate ongoing mediation efforts” toward a truce.

The top world court, the International Court of Justice, on Friday ordered Israel to halt any offensive in Rafah and elsewhere that could bring about “the physical destruction” of the Palestinians.

The war in Gaza started after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36,050 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, which has been central to aid operations in the besieged territory during the war, said on social media platform X that “with every day passing, providing assistance & protection becomes nearly impossible.”

“The images from last night are testament to how Rafah has turned into hell on Earth,” he said.


Israeli defense minister warns Hezbollah against joining conflict with Iran

Updated 4 sec ago
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Israeli defense minister warns Hezbollah against joining conflict with Iran

Hezbollah has made no explicit pledge to join the fighting

JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Lebanon’s Hezbollah to exercise caution on Friday, saying Israel’s patience with “terrorists” who threaten it had worn thin.

The head of Iran-backed Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said on Thursday that the Lebanese group would act as it saw fit in the face of what he called “brutal Israeli-American aggression” against Iran.

In other statements, the group has made no explicit pledge to join the fighting and a Hezbollah official told Reuters last week that the group did not intend to initiate attacks against Israel.

Gaza rescuers say 43 killed by Israeli forces

Updated 14 min 21 sec ago
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Gaza rescuers say 43 killed by Israeli forces

  • Civil defense official says 26 people killed while gathered near aid distribution center

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed at least 43 people on Friday, including 26 who had gathered near an aid distribution center, the latest in a string of deadly incidents targeting aid seekers in the Palestinian territory.
“Forty-three martyrs have fallen as a result of the ongoing Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip since dawn today, 26 of whom were waiting for humanitarian aid,” Mohammad Al-Mughayyir, director of medical supply at the civil defense agency in Gaza, told AFP.


UN warns of ‘disastrous consequences’ of escalating Sudan fighting

Updated 23 min 29 sec ago
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UN warns of ‘disastrous consequences’ of escalating Sudan fighting

  • The United Nations’ rights chief Volker Turk said on Friday that escalating fighting in Sudan’s west and center risks aggravating harm to civilians and abuses

GENEVA: The United Nations’ rights chief Volker Turk said on Friday that escalating fighting in Sudan’s west and center risks aggravating harm to civilians and abuses, more than two years into the country’s war.
Turk in a statement warned of “the disastrous consequences stemming from ongoing and escalating hostilities” in North Darfur and Kordofan states, “amid a pervasive culture of impunity for human rights violations.”


Gaza faces a manmade drought as water systems collapse, UNICEF says

Updated 20 June 2025
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Gaza faces a manmade drought as water systems collapse, UNICEF says

  • “Children will begin to die of thirst ... Just 40 percent of drinking water production facilities remain functional,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva
  • “We just hope that a comprehensive solution could be reached to end the war in Gaza, too. We are being forgotten” said a father in Gaza

GENEVA: Gaza is facing a manmade drought as its water systems collapse, the United Nations’ children agency said on Friday.

“Children will begin to die of thirst ... Just 40 percent of drinking water production facilities remain functional,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva.

Israel is now channelling much of the aid into Gaza through a new US – and Israeli-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which uses private US security and logistics firms and operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Israeli forces.

Israel has said it will continue to allow aid into Gaza, home to more than 2 million people, while ensuring it doesn’t get to Hamas. Hamas denies seizing aid, saying Israel uses hunger as a weapon.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, called the current system for distributing aid “a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness,” in a post on X on Wednesday.

Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, displaced almost all the territory’s residents, and caused a severe hunger crisis.

The World Food Programme called on Wednesday for a big increase in food distribution in Gaza, saying that the 9,000 metric tons it had dispatched over the last four weeks inside Gaza represented a “tiny fraction” of what was needed.

“The fear of starvation and desperate need for food is causing large crowds to gather along well-known transport routes, hoping to intercept and access humanitarian supplies while in transit,” the WFP said in a statement.

“Any violence resulting in starving people being killed or injured while seeking life-saving assistance is completely unacceptable,” it added.

Palestinians in Gaza have been closely following Israel’s air war with Iran, long a major supporter of Hamas.

“We are maybe happy to see Israel suffer from Iranian rockets, but at the end of the day, one more day in this war costs the lives of tens of innocent people,” said 47-year-old Shaban Abed, a father of five from northern Gaza.

“We just hope that a comprehensive solution could be reached to end the war in Gaza, too. We are being forgotten.”


Iran rejects any negotiation with US while Israeli attacks continue

Updated 20 June 2025
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Iran rejects any negotiation with US while Israeli attacks continue

  • ‘The Americans have repeatedly sent messages calling seriously for negotiations’
  • ‘But we have made clear that as long as the aggression does not stop, there will be no place for diplomacy and dialogue’

TEHRAN: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected any negotiations with the United States while Israel continues its attacks on Iran, in an interview with state TV broadcast on Friday.

“The Americans have repeatedly sent messages calling seriously for negotiations. But we have made clear that as long as the aggression does not stop, there will be no place for diplomacy and dialogue,” said the chief diplomat, who was due in Geneva for talks with his European counterparts.