At least 45 people have been killed, including women and children, in an Israeli air strike on a camp for displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the Hamas-run health ministry says.
Videos from the scene in the Tal al-Sultan area on Sunday night showed a large explosion and intense fires burning.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had killed two senior Hamas officials and that it was reviewing reports that civilians were harmed as a result of the strike and fire it ignited.
Hours earlier, Hamas had fired eight rockets from Rafah towards Tel Aviv – the first long-range attacks on the central Israeli city since January.
Some 800,000 people have fled Rafah since the start of an Israeli ground operation there three weeks ago, but hundreds of thousands are still believed to be sheltering there.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday’s air strike targeted tents for displaced people near a UN facility in Tal al-Sultan, about 2km (1.2 miles) north-west of the centre of Rafah.
The IDF said in a statement on Sunday that it had carried out an air strike in Tal al-Sultan that eliminated two Hamas leaders – Yassin Rabia, the chief of staff of the armed group’s fighters in the occupied West Bank, and Khaled Nagar, another senior official in the West Bank wing.
Credit: bbc.com
