At least 11 Palestinians have been killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp in Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.
A further 50 people were injured, the authority said on Saturday. The information could not be independently verified. The Israeli military did not initially comment on the incident.
According to the authorities, some tents belonging to refugees who were in front of the Emirati hospital in the Tal al-Sultan district were hit. A paramedic and a nurse at the hospital were among the casualties, it said.
In Rafah, which lies on the border with Egypt, about 1.5 million people are currently crowded together in cramped areas. Most of them have fled the war from other parts of the sealed-off coastal strip. They are mostly living in tents without adequate sanitary facilities or healthcare.
Israel had designated parts of Rafah, including Tal al-Sultan, as safe when it had called on the Palestinian civilian population to evacuate other regions of the Gaza Strip in earlier phases of the war to avoid being caught up in the fighting.
So far, 30,320 people in Gaza have been killed and more than 71,500 injured since the war began, unleashed by the October 7 attacks when Hamas and other extremist groups killed 1,200 people in Israel and abducted approximately 240 more.
