TEL AVIV, Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that a “tragic mistake” was made in an Israeli strike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah that set fire to a camp housing displaced Palestinians and, according to local officials, killed at least 45 people.
The strike only added to the surging international criticism Israel has faced over its war with Hamas, with even its closest allies expressing outrage at civilian deaths. Israel insists it adheres to international law even as it faces scrutiny in the world’s top courts, one of which last week demanded that it halt the offensive in Rafah.
Netanyahu did not elaborate on the error. Israel’s military initially said it had carried out a precise airstrike on a Hamas compound, killing two senior militants. As details of the strike and fire emerged, the military said it had opened an investigation into the deaths of civilians.
Sunday night’s attack, which appeared to be one of the war’s deadliest, helped push the overall Palestinian death toll in the war above 36,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and noncombatants in its tally.
“Despite our utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians, last night there was a tragic mistake,” Netanyahu said Monday in an address to Israel’s parliament. “We are investigating the incident and will obtain a conclusion because this is our policy.”
Mohammed Abuassa, who rushed to the scene in the northwestern neighborhood of Tel Al-Sultan, said rescuers “pulled out people who were in an unbearable state.”
“We pulled out children who were in pieces. We pulled out young and elderly people. The fire in the camp was unreal,” he said.
At least 45 people were killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service. The ministry said the dead included at least 12 women, eight children and three older adults, with another three bodies burned beyond recognition.
In a separate development, Egypt’s military said one of its soldiers was shot dead during an exchange of fire in the Rafah area, without providing further details. Israel said it was in contact with Egyptian authorities, and both sides said they were investigating.
An initial investigation found that the soldier had responded to an exchange of fire between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants, Egypt’s state-owned Qahera TV reported. Egypt has warned that Israel’s incursion in Rafah could threaten the two countries’ decades-old peace treaty.
The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency closed meeting for Tuesday afternoon on the situation in Rafah at the request of Algeria, the Arab representative on the council, two council diplomats told The Associated Press ahead of an official announcement.
Rafah, the southernmost Gaza city on the border with Egypt, had housed more than a million people — about half of Gaza’s population — displaced from other parts of the territory. Most have fled once again since Israel launched what it called a limited incursion there earlier this month. Hundreds of thousands are packed into squalid tent camps in and around the city.
Elsewhere in Rafah, the director of the Kuwait Hospital, one of the city’s last functioning medical centers, said it was shutting down and that staff members were relocating to a field hospital. Dr. Suhaib Al-Hamas said the decision was made after a strike killed two health workers Monday at the entrance to the hospital.
Netanyahu says Israel must destroy what he says are Hamas’ last remaining battalions in Rafah. The militant group launched a barrage of rockets Sunday from the city toward heavily populated central Israel, setting off air raid sirens but causing no injuries.
The strike on Rafah brought a new wave of condemnation, even from Israel’s strongest supporters.
The US National Security Council said in a statement that the “devastating images” from the strike on Rafah were “heartbreaking.” It said the US was working with the Israeli military and others to assess what happened.
French President Emmanuel Macron was more blunt, saying “these operations must stop” in a post on X. “There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians. I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire,” he wrote.
The Foreign Office of Germany, which has been a staunch supporter of Israel for decades, said “the images of charred bodies, including children, from the airstrike in Rafah are unbearable.”
“The exact circumstances must be clarified, and the investigation announced by the Israeli army must now come quickly,” the ministry added. ”The civilian population must finally be better protected.”
Qatar, a key mediator in attempts to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas, said the Rafah strike could “complicate” talks, Negotiations, which appear to be restarting, have faltered repeatedly over Hamas’ demand for a lasting truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, terms Israeli leaders have publicly rejected.
The Israeli military’s top legal official, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, said authorities were examining the strike in Rafah and that the military regrets the loss of civilian life.
Speaking to an Israeli lawyers’ conference, Tomer-Yerushalmi said Israel has launched 70 criminal investigations into possible violations of international law, including the deaths of civilians, the conditions at a detention facility holding suspected militants and the deaths of some inmates in Israeli custody. She said incidents of property crimes and looting were also being examined.
Israel has long maintained it has an independent judiciary capable of investigating and prosecuting abuses. But rights groups say Israeli authorities routinely fail to fully investigate violence against Palestinians and that even when soldiers are held accountable, the punishment is usually light.
Israel has denied allegations of genocide brought against it by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. Last week, the court ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive, a ruling it has no power to enforce.
Separately, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three Hamas leaders, over alleged crimes linked to the war. The ICC only intervenes when it concludes that the state in question is unable or unwilling to properly prosecute such crimes.
Israel says it does its best to adhere to the laws of war. Israeli leaders also say they face an enemy that makes no such commitment, embeds itself in civilian areas and refuses to release Israeli hostages unconditionally.
Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages. Hamas still holds about 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a ceasefire last year.
Around 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes. Severe hunger is widespread, and UN officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine.
Netanyahu says deadly Israeli strike in Rafah was the result of a ‘tragic mistake’
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Netanyahu says deadly Israeli strike in Rafah was the result of a ‘tragic mistake’
- “Despite our utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians, last night there was a tragic mistake,” Netanyahu said Monday in an address to Israel’s parliament
Hamas leader Sinwar threw stick at drone just before death, according to Israel video
- Israeli troops were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy
JERUSALEM: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday.
As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation.
After an intensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy after a gunbattle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said.
Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where he could operate, the military said on Thursday, after dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death.
But unlike other militant leaders tracked down and killed by Israel, including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the operation which finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.
Instead, officials said he was found by infantry soldiers from the Bislach Brigade, a unit that normally trains future unit commanders. The soldiers were searching an area in the Tal El Sultan area of southern Gaza on Wednesday, where they believed senior members of Hamas were located.
The troops saw three suspected militants moving between buildings and opened fire, leading to a gunfight during which Sinwar escaped into a ruined building.
According to accounts in Israeli media, tank shells and a missile were also fired at the building.
On Thursday, the military released footage from a mini drone that it said showed Sinwar, badly wounded in the hand, sitting on a chair, his face covered in a scarf. The film shows him attempting to throw a stick at the drone, in a futile effort to knock it down.
At this stage, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, Sinwar was only identified as a fighter, but troops entered and found him with a weapon, a flak jacket and 40,000 shekels ($10,731.63).
“He tried to escape and our forces eliminated him,” he told reporters in a televised briefing.
Hamas has not made any comment itself, but sources within the group have said that the indications they have seen suggest Sinwar was indeed killed by Israeli troops.
“The dozens of operations carried out by the IDF and the ISA over the last year, and in recent weeks in the area where he was eliminated, restricted Yahya Sinwar’s operational movement as he was pursued by the forces and led to his elimination,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
In the last months of his life, Sinwar, the main architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza, appears to have stopped using telephones and other communication equipment that would have allowed Israel’s powerful intelligence services to track him down.
Israeli officials said they believed he was hiding in one of the vast network of tunnels that Hamas dug beneath Gaza over the past two decades, but as more and more have been uncovered by Israeli troops, even the tunnels were no guarantee of escaping capture.
The head of Israel’s military, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Israel’s pursuit of Sinwar over the past year drove him “to act like a fugitive, causing him to change locations multiple times.”
Israeli officials, who knew Sinwar as a ruthless and committed enemy, were long concerned that he had surrounded himself with some of the 101 Israeli and foreign hostages still held in Gaza as a human shield to protect himself from Israeli attacks.
But no hostages were found nearby when he was finally trapped on Wednesday, although Hagari said samples of his DNA were located in a tunnel a few hundred meters from where six Israeli hostages were executed by Hamas at the end of August.
At least 28 dead in Gaza strike on school-turned-shelter
- Israeli said the strike targeted militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups
- Hamas said allegations about fighters present at school were 'nothing but lies'
CAIRO: At least 28 Palestinians including children were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on a shelter in the northern Gaza Strip, a Gaza health ministry official said, while Israel said the attack targeted tens of militants at the site.
Dozens were also injured in the strike, said the official, Medhat Abbas, adding: “There is no water to extinguish the fire. There is nothing. This is a massacre.”
“Civilians and children are being killed, burned under fire,” said Abbas.
The Israeli military said in a statement the strike targeted militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, who operated from within the Abu Hussein School in Jabalia that had been serving as a shelter for displaced people.
It said dozens of militants were present inside the compound when the strike took place, and provided the names of at least 12 of them, which Reuters could not immediately verify.
The military said it took precautions to mitigate harm to civilians and accused Hamas of using them as human shields — a practice Hamas denies.
Hamas said in a statement that allegations there were fighters at the school were “nothing but lies,” adding this was “a systematic policy of the enemy to justify its crime.”
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number of dead at the school at 28. It said 160 people were wounded in the attack.
Earlier on Thursday, Palestinian health officials said at least 11 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli strikes in Gaza City, while several others were killed in central and southern Gaza areas.
Footage circulated by Palestinian media of the Abu Hussein School and which Reuters couldn’t immediately verify, showed smoke coming from tents that caught fire, as many displaced people evacuated casualties including children to ambulances.
Residents of Jabalia, in northern Gaza, said Israeli forces blew up clusters of houses firing from the air, from tanks and by placing bombs in buildings then detonating them remotely.
The area has been a focus for the Israeli military for the past two weeks, which says it is trying to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping for more attacks.
Residents said Israeli forces had effectively isolated Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya in the far north of the enclave from Gaza City, blocking movement except for those families heeding evacuation orders and leaving the three towns.
“We have written our death notes, and we are not leaving Jabalia,” one resident told Reuters via a chat app.
“The occupation (Israel) is punishing us for not leaving our houses in the early days of the war, and we are not going now either. They are blowing up houses, and roads, and are starving us but we die once and we don’t lose our pride,” the father of four said, refusing to give his name, fearing Israeli reprisal.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it seized many weapons in the area, some of which were stashed in a school, and that its forces have killed dozens of militants in airstrikes and combat at close quarters, as troops try to root out Hamas forces operating in the rubble.
Northern Gaza, which had been home to well over half the territory’s 2.3 million people, was bombed to rubble in the first phase of Israel’s assault on the territory a year ago, after the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas-led fighters, who killed 1,200 people and captured 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel’s offensive so far, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
The United States has told Israel that it must take steps to improve the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza in 30 days or face potential restrictions on military aid.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss expanding humanitarian aid to Gaza, officials said, with aid likely to increase soon.
Egypt raises gasoline, diesel prices for third time this year
- Prices for diesel fuel, one of the most commonly used fuels in the country, were raised by 17 percent to 13.50 Egyptian pounds
CAIRO: Egypt raised prices on a wide range of fuel products early on Friday, the petroleum ministry said, marking the third such increase this year.
Prices for diesel fuel, one of the most commonly used fuels in the country, were raised by 17 percent to 13.50 Egyptian pounds ($0.2779) per liter from 11.50 pounds.
Gasoline prices increased from 11 percent to 13 percent depending on the grade, with 80 octane gasoline rising to 13.75 Egyptian pounds, 92 octane to 15.25 pounds, and 95 octane to 17 pounds.
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said in July that prices of petroleum products will gradually increase until the end of 2025, adding that the government could no longer bear the burden of paying the subsidies on fuels amid increasing consumption.
But the government’s fuel pricing committee, which typically convenes each quarter, said on Friday its next meeting will be held in six months.
Israel PM says killing of Hamas chief ‘beginning of the end’ of Gaza war
- “While this is not the end of the war in Gaza, it’s the beginning of the end,” Netanyahu said
- Iran's UN mission says Sinwar’s killing would lead to the strengthening of “resistance” in the region
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip was the “beginning of the end” of the year-long war in the Palestinian territory.
The Israeli military said that after a lengthy hunt, troops had on Wednesday “eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip.”
Hamas has not confirmed his death.
Netanyahu, who vowed to crush Hamas at the start of the war, hailed Sinwar’s killing, saying: “While this is not the end of the war in Gaza, it’s the beginning of the end.”
He had earlier called Sinwar’s death an “important landmark in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas.”
The chief of Hamas in Gaza at the time of the October 7 attack that sparked the war, Sinwar became the militant group’s overall leader after the killing in July of its political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.
He is said to have masterminded the October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures that includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s announcement of Sinwar’s death comes weeks after it assassinated Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a strike in Lebanon, where the Israeli military has been at war since late September.
With Hamas already weakened more than a year into the Gaza war, Sinwar’s death deals an immense blow to the organization.
US President Joe Biden, whose government is Israel’s top arms provider, said: “This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.”
“There is now the opportunity for a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
Militants also seized 251 hostages during the October 7 attack and took them into Gaza. Ninety-seven remain there, including 34 who Israeli officials say are dead.
Following the attack, Netanyahu vowed to defeat Hamas and bring home all the hostages.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 42,438 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the UN considers reliable.
Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi said: “We are settling the score with Sinwar, who is responsible for that very difficult day a year ago.”
He vowed the military would keep fighting “until we capture all the terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre and bring all the hostages home.”
Some Israelis hailed the news of Sinwar’s death as a sign of better things to come.
“I am celebrating the death of Sinwar, who has brought us nothing but harm, who has taken people hostage,” said one Israeli woman, Hemda, who only gave her first name.
Attending a Tel Aviv rally demanding the hostages’ release, 60-year-old El-Sisil, who also gave only her first name, said his killing presented a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for “a hostage deal to end the war.”
But whether the Hamas chief’s death will bring the end of the war any closer is unclear.
Warning that the hostages were in “grave danger,” Israeli military historian Guy Aviad said Sinwar’s killing was “a significant event... but it’s not the end of the war.”
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged the Israeli government and international mediators to leverage “this major achievement to secure hostages’ return.”
According to a statement from Netanyahu’s office, Biden called him to congratulate him on Sinwar’s killing, with the two leaders vowing to seize “an opportunity to promote the release of the hostages.”
Netanyahu said Palestinian militants should free the hostages if they want to live.
The Israeli military said Sinwar was killed in a firefight in southern Gaza’s Rafah, near the Egyptian border, while being tracked by a drone.
It released drone footage of what it said was Sinwar’s final moments, with the video showing a wounded militant throwing an object at the drone.
With the civilian toll in Gaza mounting, Israel has faced criticism over its conduct of the war, including from the United States.
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, two hospitals said Israeli air strikes on a school sheltering displaced people killed at least 14 people, though the military reported that it had hit militants.
According to a UN-backed assessment, some 345,000 Gazans face “catastrophic” levels of hunger this winter.
Nearly 100 percent of Gaza’s population now lives in poverty, the UN’s International Labour Organization said, warning that the war’s impact on Gaza “will be felt for generations to come.”
Israel is also fighting a war in Lebanon, where Hamas ally Hezbollah opened a front by launching cross-border strikes that forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes.
Hezbollah said Thursday it was launching a new phase in its war against Israel, saying it had used precision-guided missiles against troops for the first time.
On the same day, Israel conducted strikes on the south Lebanese city of Tyre, where the militant group and its allies hold sway.
The Lebanese National News Agency reported strikes on the Bekaa Valley, after Israel had issued an evacuation warning for civilians there.
The Israeli military said five soldiers were killed in combat in southern Lebanon, taking to 19 the number of troop deaths announced since Israel began raids into Lebanon last month.
In Lebanon, the war since late September has left at least 1,418 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.
The war has also drawn in other Iran-aligned armed groups, including in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
Iran on October 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel, for which Israel has vowed to retaliate.
Tehran’s mission to the United Nations said Thursday that Sinwar’s killing would lead to the strengthening of “resistance” in the region.
Lebanon crowdfunded ambulances under fire in Israel-Hezbollah war
BEIRUT: Lebanese data scientist and volunteer rescue worker Bachir Nakhal started a crowdfunding effort to buy new ambulances for south Lebanon months ago, fearing Israel’s war in Gaza could spread to his country.
But weeks into Israel’s war with Hezbollah, his worst fears came true when an ambulance he had helped purchase was bombed.
“We were trying to get the number of ambulances up to the bare minimum level,” he told AFP.
“We weren’t expecting the ambulances ... to get directly targeted or bombed,” said Nakhal, who says the vehicle he had raised money for was destroyed in an Israeli strike just four days after the volunteers had received it.
The October 9 strike, which took place in the southern village of Derdghaiya, killed five rescue workers, including the head of the local team and his son, according to the civil defense.
The incident was among what the United Nations says is a growing number of attacks on healthcare in Lebanon, with paramedics, first responders and ambulances increasingly in the firing line.
“More attacks continue to be reported where ambulances and relief centers are targeted or hit in Lebanon,” UN humanitarian agency OCHA said after the Derdghaiya strike.
The Israeli army has accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to transport weapons and fighters, though it has yet to produce any evidence.
“Necessary measures will be taken against any vehicle transporting gunmen, regardless of its type,” Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote in Arabic on social media platform X.
Nakhal said a second crowdfunded ambulance, dispatched to the southern city of Nabatiyeh on Monday, was barely on the road for a day when it had a close call with heavy strikes.
Israel had earlier in the war issued an evacuation warning for Nabatiyeh, where Hezbollah and its ally Amal hold sway.
