Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Monday that the death toll from Israeli air strikes on a camp housing displaced Palestinians near Rafah had risen to 40.
“The massacre committed by the Israeli occupation army in the refugee tents northwest of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip has left 40 martyrs and 65 wounded,” Mohammad al-Mughayyir, a senior official at the civil defense agency, told AFP.
“We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs … We also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women, and the elderly.” He said that rescue efforts were facing major challenges.
“There is a fuel shortage … there are roads that have been destroyed, which hinders the movement of civil defense vehicles in these targeted areas,” Mughayyir said. “There is also a shortage of water to extinguish fires.”
Israel has kept up operations in Rafah despite a ruling by the top UN court on Friday ordering it to immediately halt its military operations in the overcrowded city, once claimed by Israel to be a safe zone.
The spokesman for the health ministry in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qidra, had earlier said most of the injured were women and children.
