Death toll from Israeli airstrikes on 2 homes in Rafah rises to 24

By Hosni Nadim

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - The number of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes on two homes in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza has risen to 24, including 16 children and six women, medical sources told Anadolu on Sunday.

The sources said a number of Palestinians had succumbed to injuries they sustained in the Israeli air raids on Saturday evening targeting two houses, one in eastern Rafah and the other in its center.

They noted that others are still missing under the rubble.

On Saturday evening, the civil defense service in the Gaza Strip announced the retrieval of several victims from an Israeli aerial bombardment on a residential building in the eastern part of Rafah.

In a statement, they said their teams had retrieved victims from “the targeting by occupation aircraft of a multi-story residential building belonging to the Abdul-Aal family on George Street in eastern Rafah.”

Their teams "are still attempting to retrieve more fatalities and search for the missing people.”

This comes amid Israeli threats to invade Rafah despite warnings from the international community and the UN against entering the city, which is considered the last refuge for displaced people in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

At least 34,097 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 76,980 injured since then, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala