Israeli airstrike targets central Rafah home, causing fatalities, injuries: Palestinian authorities

By Anadolu staff

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – Several Palestinians were killed and others were injured on Saturday due to Israeli airstrikes targeting a house belonging to the “Shahin” family in the center of Rafah city, southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian authorities said.

The Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza said in a statement received by Anadolu that its staffers “managed to retrieve several martyrs and transfer several wounded from the Shahin family's house in the center of Rafah city as a result of the Israeli targeting.”

An Anadolu correspondent, citing eyewitnesses, reported that the airstrike targeting the Shahin family's house in the administrative district of Rafah resulted in extensive destruction in the targeted area, which housed displaced people from various areas in the Gaza Strip.

These raids came amid escalating Israeli threats to carry out a ground operation in Rafah, adjacent to the border with Egypt, despite increasing regional and international warnings of potential catastrophic consequences.

Rafah city is witnessing a large influx as it hosts at least 1.4 million Palestinians, including more than a million displaced individuals who fled to it due to Israeli army operations in the northern and central parts of the Gaza Strip, claiming it to be a “safe zone.”

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since an attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas. The ensuing Israel attack has killed at least 29,410 Palestinians and injured nearly 70,000. Less than 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

According to the UN, 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.

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel, for the first time, has been accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body of the United Nations, for its war against Gaza.

An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to provide and guarantee humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala