Israeli strike on Rafah kills nine, including six children

An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza's southernmost city has killed at least nine people, six of them children, hospital authorities said yesterday, as Israel pursued its nearly seven-month offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory.

- MOHAMMAD JAHJOUH, SAMY MAGDY

Israel’s war against the Islamist militant group Hamas has led to a dramatic escalation of tensions in an already volatile Middle East. The strike late on Friday hit a residential building in the western Tel Sultan neighbourhood of the city of Rafah, according to Gaza’s civil defence authorities. The bodies of the six children, two women and a man were taken to Rafah’s Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, medical records showed.

At the hospital, relatives cried and hugged the bodies of the children, which were wrapped in white shrouds, as others comforted them. The dead include Abdel-Fattah Sobhi Radwan along with his wife Najlaa Ahmed Aweidah and their three children, his brother-in-law Ahmed Barhoum said. Mr Barhoum said he had also lost his wife, Rawan Radwan, and their five-year-old daughter Alaa.

“This is a world devoid of all human values and morals,” Mr Barhoum told reporters yesterday morning, crying as he cradled and gently rocked the body of Alaa in his arms. “They bombed a house full of displaced people, women and children. There were no martyrs but women and children.”

No victims were reported from a second overnight strike on the city. Rafah, which lies on the border with Egypt, currently contains more than half of Gaza’s total population – around 2.3 million people, the vast majority of whom have been displaced by fighting further north in the territory.