Israeli strikes on a tent camp in an evacuation area west of Rafah have killed at least 21 people, Gaza health authorities said, as tanks advanced to the centre of the southern city for the first time after a night of heavy bombardment.
It comes two days after an Israeli airstrike on another camp prompted global condemnation.
Gaza emergency services said four tank shells hit a cluster of tents in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area that Israel had advised civilians in Rafah to move to for safety.
At least 12 of the dead were women, according to medical officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave.
The Israeli military denied conducting a strike in Al-Mawasi.
“Contrary to the reports from the last few hours, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) did not strike in the Humanitarian Area in Al-Mawasi,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
In central Rafah, tanks and armoured vehicles mounted with machine guns were spotted near Al-Awda mosque, witnesses told Reuters.
The Israeli military said its forces continued to operate in the area, without commenting on reported advances into the city centre.
International unease over Israel’s three-week-old Rafah offensive has turned to outrage after an attack on Sunday set off a blaze in a tent camp in a western district of the city, killing at least 45 people.
Israel said it had targeted Hamas commanders and had not intended to cause civilian casualties.
Global leaders condemned the fire in a designated “humanitarian zone” of Rafah where families uprooted by fighting elsewhere had sought shelter, and urged the implementation of a World Court order last week for a halt to Israel’s assault.
Meanwhile. the US military has suspended aid deliveries into Gaza by sea, the Department of Defense said, after its temporary pier was damaged by bad weather.
“The rebuilding and repairing of the pier will take at least over a week,” Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.
“Upon completion of the pier repair and reassembly, the intention is to reanchor the temporary pier to the coast of Gaza and resume humanitarian aid to the people who need it most.”
Today’s attack occurred in an area designated by Israel as an expanded humanitarian zone, to which it had called on civilians in Rafah to evacuate for their own safety when it launched its incursion in early May.
In a diplomatic move purportedly aimed at reining in the violence, Spain, Ireland and Norway were to officially recognise a Palestinian state.
The three countries have said they hope their decision will accelerate efforts towards securing a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas militants, now in its eighth month, that has reduced much of the densely populated territory to rubble.
Residents said Rafah’s Tel Al-Sultan neighbourhood, the scene of Sunday’s night-time strike in which tents and shelters were set ablaze as families settled down to sleep, was still being bombarded.
“Tank shells are falling everywhere in Tel Al-Sultan. Many families have fled their houses in western Rafah under fire throughout the night,” one resident told Reuters via a chat app.
Around one million people – many repeatedly displaced by shifting waves of the war – have fled the Israeli offensive in Rafah since early May, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported.
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A video obtained by Reuters showed families on the move again, carrying their belongings through Rafah’s streets, their children trailing behind them.
“There are a lot of attacks, smoke and dust. It is death from God …The (Israelis) are hitting everywhere. We’re tired,” Moayad Fusaifas said, pushing along belongings on two bicycles.
Since Israel launched its incursion by seizing control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt three weeks ago, tanks had probed around the outskirts and entered some eastern districts but had not yet rumbled into the city in full force.
In recent days, Israeli tanks have advanced towards western neighbourhoods and taken up positions on the Zurub hilltop in western Rafah.
Witnesses reported gunbattles between Israeli troops and Hamas-led fighters in the Zurub area.
Witnesses in central Rafah said the Israeli military appeared to have brought in remote-operated armoured vehicles and there was no immediate sign of personnel in or around them.
An Israeli military spokesperson had no immediate comment.
The Israeli military said it operated overnight along the Philadelphi Corridor that separates Gaza from Egypt “based on intelligence indicating the presence of terror targets”.
Israeli troops were engaged in close-quarter combat and were locating tunnel shafts, weapons and militant infrastructure, it said in a statement.
Israel has kept up attacks despite the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday ordering it to stop given a high risk of civilian casualties.
Israel has argued that the top UN court’s decision had left it some scope for military action there.
The ICJ also reiterated calls for the immediate and unconditional release of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s health ministry says.
Israel launched its air and ground war after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel said it wants to root out Hamas fighters hiding in Rafah and rescue hostages it says are being held in the area.
In Jabalia in the northern Gaza, one of the largest of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps, Israeli forces have been engaged in fighting with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, residents said.
In some residential districts from which Israeli forces have retreated, civil emergency teams said they were recovering bodies from the ruins.
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US President Joe Biden is facing increasing pressure from within his own party to scale back support for Israel.
Prominent democrat in the House of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called yesterday’s strike on Rafah “an indefensible atrocity”, adding in a social media post that “it is long past time for the president to live up to his word and suspend military aid.”
Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “genocidal maniac”.
A spokesperson said the US government was “actively engaging” with the Israeli military and others on the ground to assess what happened.
Mr Netanyahu said the strike was not intended to cause civilian casualties, but went “tragically wrong.”
“In Rafah, we already evacuated about one million non-combatant residents and despite our utmost effort not to harm non-combatants, something unfortunately went tragically wrong,” he said in a speech in parliament that was interrupted by shouting from opposition politicians.
Survivors said families were preparing to sleep when the strike hit the Tel Al-Sultan neighbourhood where thousands were sheltering after Israeli forces began a ground offensive in the east of Rafah over two weeks ago.
“We were praying … and we were getting our children’s beds ready to sleep. There was nothing unusual, then we heard a very loud noise, and fire erupted around us,” said one woman.
“All the children started screaming … The sound was terrifying; we felt like the metal was about to collapse on us, and shrapnel fell into the rooms.”
Video footage obtained by Reuters showed a fire raging in the darkness and people screaming in panic. A group of young men tried to haul away sheets of corrugated iron and a hose from a single fire truck began to douse the flames.
More than half of the dead were women, children, and elderly people, health officials in Hamas-run Gaza said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise from people with severe burns.
Israel’s military said the strike, based on “precise intelligence”, had eliminated Hamas’ chief of staff for the second and larger Palestinian territory, the West Bank, plus another official behind deadly attacks on Israelis.
That followed the interception of eight rockets fired towards Israel from the Rafah area in Gaza’s southern tip.
