10 February,2024 07:47 AM IST | Rafah | Agencies
People salvage what they can amid the destruction
Israel bombed targets in overcrowded Rafah early Friday, hours after Biden administration officials warned Israel against expanding its Gaza ground offensive to the southern city where more than half of the territory's 2.3 million people have sought refuge.
Airstrikes overnight and into Friday hit two residential buildings in Rafah, killing eight Palestinians, and a third strike targeted a kindergarten-turned-shelter for the displaced in central Gaza, killing at least four people, according to hospital officials and AP journalists who saw bodies arriving at hospitals.
Women and children queue for water. Pics/AP
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US President Joe Biden said Thursday that Israel's conduct in the war is "over the top", the harshest US criticism yet of its close ally amid concern over the soaring civilian death toll in Gaza. Israel's stated intentions to expand its ground offensive to Rafah also prompted an unusual public backlash.
"We have yet to see any evidence of serious planning for the operation," Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday. Going ahead with such an offensive now, "with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster."
Airstrikes Overnight
Shortly after midnight Friday, a residential building was struck near Rafah's Kuwaiti Hospital, killing five people from the al-Sayed family, including three children and a woman. A second Rafah strike killed three more people. In the central area of Gaza, a kindergarten-turned-shelter was bombed, leaving four dead and 30 wounded, most of them women and children. Witnesses said those in the shelter were sleeping when the building was struck.
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