UPDATES WITH REVISED DECK, LEDE, MORE DETAILS
By Anadolu Staff
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - At least nine Palestinian civilians were killed on Monday when Israeli warplanes targeted a group of merchants and security personnel accompanying cargo trucks in eastern Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, during the second day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.
According to a medical source at the Gaza European Hospital, nine fatalities were brought to the hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, along with several injured individuals, some of whom were reported to be in critical condition.
The Israeli strikes targeted the merchants and private cargo security personnel as they were waiting for the arrival of cargo trucks through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses told Anadolu.
This airstrike came despite the Israeli army's announcement on Sunday about a “tactical pause” in firing on Salah al-Din Street from the Rafah land crossing to the Gaza European Hospital from 7 am to 8 pm, to allow the UN to collect and bring aid into Gaza.
On the second day of Eid al-Adha, the Israeli military carried out a series of airstrikes on various areas of the Gaza Strip, resulting in deaths and injuries of several people, according to medical sources and witnesses.
Earlier in the day, one civilian was killed and another was wounded when an Israeli drone struck a home in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood west of Rafah, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Additionally, a Palestinian lost his life, and others, including children and women, were wounded in an Israeli bombardment of the Khirbat al-Adas area north of the city, it added.
The Israeli army on Monday claimed that it has "operational control" over some 70% of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and aims to complete its military campaign in the area within a few weeks.
Current military offensives are concentrated in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood and the eastern part of the Shabora neighborhood, the army said in a statement.
Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.
More than 37,300 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and more than 85,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.
Over eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
*Writing by Mohammad Sio