Netanyahu says that there were deaths of civilians in the Israeli strike on Rafah

General Tomer-Yerushalmi, the air strike in Rafah, Palestine, and the Jordanian Red Crescent Society

“Naturally, in a war of such scope and intensity, complex incidents also occur,” General Tomer-Yerushalmi said in a speech to the Israeli Bar Association. The incident in Rafah last night is very serious. She added that the military “regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians during the war.”

Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi said on Monday that the air strike was under review. She said the military police had opened around 70 criminal investigations into potential misconduct during the war.

“These are very, very tightly packed tents,” he said. “And a fire like this could spread over a huge distance with catastrophic consequences in a very, very short space of time.”

The United Nations estimated that more than a million people fled in less than a month after the Israeli military announced it was launching an offensive.

The trauma center’s workers shared video of the strike and fire with Dr. Smith from a distance that he said was too dangerous to cross.

Dr. James Smith said the injured were taken to a trauma stabilization center in Tal al-Sultan and then forwarded to other field hospitals for further treatment. In recent months the Israeli military has shut down and evacuated several hospitals, including the one in Rafah.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that its ambulance crews had taken a “large” number of victims to the Tal as Sultan clinic and field hospitals in Rafah, where few functioning hospitals remain, and that “numerous” people had been trapped in fires at the site of the strikes.

Mr. al-Sapti said that at the scene of the strike he saw charred bodies and people screaming as firefighters tried to put out the flames. “The fire was very strong and was all over the camp,” he said. “There was darkness and no electricity.”

Bilal al-Sapti, 30, a construction worker in Rafah, said that shrapnel from the strike tore up the tent where he was staying with his wife and two children, but that his family was uninjured.

Rafah fires ignited by airstrike: Israeli civilians killed in a rocket-launched assault on a Hamas compound

His comments came at a particularly delicate time, just three days after the International Court of Justice appeared to order Israel to immediately halt its offensive in the city and as diplomats were aiming to restart negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas at some point in the next week.

The military has said that the strike in Rafah on Sunday — which ignited a deadly fire in the camp and killed dozens of people — was targeting a Hamas compound.

The Israeli military said that it was looking into reports that several civilians in the area were harmed by the airstrike and subsequent fire. Two Hamas leaders have been killed in a strike, said a follow up statement. The strike was being reviewed by a legal official with the military.

The blast killed at least 45 people, among them 23 children and older people, according to the Gaza health ministry. The ministry said that 249 people were wounded.

“At around 6:30 p.m. yesterday, I heard a huge noise. I heard an explosion, it sounded like an earthquake,” he told NPR. “I couldn’t get out of the door so I jumped out of the window and saw injured children… one without a head.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no indication of a fire on the Rafah site of the conflict between the U.S. and Qatar

Benjamin Netanyahu is under increasing domestic pressure to negotiate a truce so that hostages can be brought home. Israel has been rocked by weekly protests by families of hostages and others calling for the resignation of Netanyahu. The hard liners in his government don’t want a complete ceasefire and they are putting pressure on him.

Israeli media is reporting that officials say that negotiations are supposed to resume next week. There were some high level discussions in Paris this weekend between the Israeli Mossad’s David Barnea, the U.S. CIA’s William J. Burns and the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahma al-Thani.

With international condemnation mounting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Monday that the killing of dozens of people in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah was “a tragic accident,” but gave no sign of curbing the Israeli offensive there.

An Israeli official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, stated on Monday that an initial investigation by the military concluded that the strike, or the scruple from it, may have inadvertently set fire to the site. Eyewitnesses described intense fires in the aftermath of the strike.

A New York Times review of the footage shows the munition hitting an area with several cabins and parked cars.

Still, he gave no indication that the Israeli military’s operation in Rafah would be interrupted. He did not directly address a question from a reporter about whether tanks had moved into Rafah’s center, saying that Hamas battalions remained in the city and that Israeli forces were operating in a “targeted” way.

Israeli jets had fired the “smallest munitions” that they could use, he said, insisting that “our munitions alone could not have ignited a fire of this size.” Those claims could not be independently verified.

The Israeli military spokesman told a news conference that an investigation was looking at all possibilities to determine the cause of the fire.

Two small warheads were used in the strike. We’re talking about munition with 17 kilos of explosive material. This is the smallest bomb that our jets are able to use. There are still being investigated the reasons why a fire broke out after this strike. Our munition alone could not have ignited a fire of this size. I want to repeat it: Our munition alone could not have ignited a fire of this size. Our investigation seeks to find out what caused the fire to start. We are operating in Rafah in a very targeted and precise way. There are still hostages in Rafah, and we need to make sure that we do everything we can to bring our hostages back home.

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, on Tuesday cited the “deeply distressing” scenes from Rafah over the weekend — many of which featured charred bodies in the wreckage of the encampment — in calling for a “swift, comprehensive” investigation.

Israeli air strikes against displaced persons do not solve the squarmur in the Rafah area of southern Egypt, according to a human rights group

Those statements did nothing to quell the chorus of demands that there be accountability and a halt to the fighting after reports of another deadly strike on Tuesday in Al-Mawasi.

As international outrage over the death of a Palestinian in an airstrike on a displaced persons camp increased, Israel’s military insisted that it was continuing with its ground assault in the Rafah area.