People among the rubble of a mosque destroyed by Israeli strikes in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Mar. 2, 2024. (Credit: AFP)
Gaza's Ministry of Health announced on Saturday evening the deaths of eleven people in an Israeli strike that hit tents of displaced civilians near a hospital in Rafah, a city on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip.
"Eleven people were killed and around 50 wounded, including children, by Israeli occupation forces who targeted the tents of displaced people and a gathering of people near the gate of the Al-Emirati maternity hospital" in Rafah, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement. A paramedic was killed in the strike, he added.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it was gathering information on the strike.
Images posted on social networks, whose provenance AFP was unable to verify independently, show several bleeding people lying on the pavement and rescue workers attending to the wounded.
An AFP reporter on the scene saw injured people being taken on stretchers to another hospital in Rafah. "There was suddenly a big explosion. They [the Israelis] shelled a square full of people ... There are many dead," Belal Abou Jekhleh, a resident of Rafah, told AFP.
Nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are crowded into Rafah, the vast majority displaced by fighting and Israeli air raids in the rest of the besieged Gaza Strip.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour via AFP.