Israel’s military has said it is likely that the blaze that ripped through a Rafah tent camp after airstrikes, killing at least 45 people, was caused by a secondary explosion.
An initial investigation by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), published on Tuesday, said the army fired two 17kg munitions targeting a pair of senior Hamas militants. Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, said the munitions on their own would have been too small to ignite a fire on such a big scale.
Israel was looking into the possibility that a Hamas weapons dump was in the area, Hagari said. The IDF published maps showing where its weapons struck and a recording of an intercepted conversation between two Hamas fighters claiming there were weapons in the area.
• Rafah latest: Israeli airstrike didn’t cross red line, says US
He said the “swift, comprehensive and transparent’ investigation would continue. “Something else ignited the fire,” Hagari said. “Our munition alone would not have ignited a fire of this size.”
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He added that “no tents were struck” by Israeli fire. “Two munitions were used during the precise attack, very small munitions — the smallest we could have used to make sure we hit the target precisely and accurately.”
On Monday Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said the weekend strike on the Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood, where some 10,000 displaced Palestinians had taken shelter, was the result of a “tragic mishap” but vowed to continue the war until “every goal has been achieved”.
At the same time as the IDF was making its announcement, officials in Gaza said that Israel had struck a second tent camp housing displaced Palestinians, this time killing 21 people west of Rafah.
• What is happening in Rafah? Israeli airstrike intensifies conflict
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the Palestinian president’s spokesman, described the new Israeli strikes as a “massacre”.
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Witnesses on Tuesday reported seeing tanks advancing into central areas, three weeks after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) began a ground operation in the southern Gazan city, despite international outcry over the danger to the civilian population. The tanks were spotted near al-Awda mosque, a central Rafah landmark.
More than 400,000 people are thought to have remained in the city after nearly a million people evacuated eastern Rafah following Israeli warnings of impending military action.
Israel has come under increasing international pressure to justify its military operation in Rafah after the deaths at the weekend.
Witnesses to the airstrike in Tel al-Sultan described scenes of horror and carnage as the fire ignited and spread through tents. More than 65 people were injured.
“The screams of children and women are still stuck in my mind as they ask for help while they are burning,” Moaz al-Bahri, 27, said. “This camp was very crowded with displaced children, elderly and women. They were killed and burnt in the most horrific ways. I saw people burning alive and charred bodies, and fragments, stones, and smoke filled the sky.”
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Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the British foreign secretary, called for a pause in fighting. “Deeply distressing scenes following the air strikes in Rafah this weekend. The IDF’s investigation must be swift, comprehensive and transparent,” Cameron wrote on Twitter/X. “We urgently need a deal to get hostages out and aid in, with a pause in fighting to allow work towards a long-term sustainable ceasefire.”
The death toll in Gaza passed 36,000 on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. It said that 36,096 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 and 81,136 have been injured.
The two Hamas fighters the IDF claimed to have killed were “terrorist Yassin Rabia … as well as Khaled Nagar, a senior official in Hamas’s Judea and Samaria wing”.
The IDF said Rabia was in charge of Hamas’s entire operation in the West Bank, including transferring funds and planning attacks in the area during the Second Intifada, a period of deadly attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
• Rafah evacuation: ‘There is nothing to protect us, there is terror in our hearts’
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Israel said the strikes were carried out “against legitimate targets under international law, using precise munitions and on the basis of precise intelligence that indicated Hamas’s use of the area”, appearing to allude to last week’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that called for Israel to curb its military operation in Rafah.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank called for “immediate international intervention” to stop “the crimes and massacre in Rafah”.
Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the UN, condemned the strikes, saying that the attack “killed scores of innocent civilians who were only seeking shelter from this deadly conflict”. He added: “There is no safe place in Gaza. This horror must stop.”
The UN security council has convened an emergency meeting for Tuesday, diplomats told AFP. The closed-door meeting was requested by Algeria, which is a non-permanent member of the council, they added.
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), which has described Gaza as “hell on earth”, said that about one million people have fled Rafah in the past three weeks.
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On Tuesday Spain, Ireland and Norway formally recognised a Palestinian state, a decision announced last week.
Simon Harris, the Irish prime minister, said the decision to recognise the state was about “keeping hope alive”. The Palestinian flag flew over Ireland’s parliament as the decision was debated by MPs.
In Madrid, Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, said in a televised address: “This is a historic decision that has a single objective: that Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace.”
Spain will recognise the borders as they existed before the Six-Day War in 1967, unless changes are agreed by both parties, he added. On Monday Spain had said that sanctions against Israel should be considered for its continued assault in Rafah.
The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, responded on Twitter/X, claiming: “Sanchez, when you … recognise a Palestinian state, you are complicit in incitement to genocide against the Jewish people and in war crimes.” He also called on the Spanish prime minister to sack his deputy, Yolanda Diaz, who called the strike on Rafah a “heinous war crime”.
In a further sign of deteriorating relations between Brussels and Israel, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell backed the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants against Netanyahu and others, including leaders of the Hamas militant group.
In France, a National Assembly session was suspended after Sebastien Delogu, a deputy of the left-wing Les Insoumis party, waved a Palestinian flag in parliament to draw attention to the situation in Gaza.
However, another EU member, Denmark, voted down a bill in parliament to recognise a Palestinian state on Tuesday.
Also on Tuesday, a Palestinian militant group released a new video of an Israeli hostage, Alexander Trufanov, for the first time since his capture on October 7.
Trufanov, an Amazon programmer who was taken from his parents’ home in the southern kibbutz of Nir Oz, is seen in a 14-second clip introducing himself and addressing “Israel and the protesters”, appearing to allude to those dissenting against the prime minister in weekly demonstrations.
“In the coming days, you’ll hear all the truth of what happened to me and the other prisoners in Gaza,” he says in the video, which has been heavily manipulated.
The video was released by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who took part in the Hamas-led cross-border attack on Israel last year but are not part of indirect ceasefire negotiations with Israel. The video shows the jihadi group also holds Israeli citizens, potentially complicating newly revived indirect talks with Hamas this week to release the 125 hostages still in captivity.
