Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: AFP 9:18 p.m., March 2, 2024, modified at 9:21 p.m., March 2, 2024

Hamas announced the death, this Saturday, of 11 people and around 50 injured in an Israeli strike near a hospital in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.

For its part, Israel claims to have carried out "a precision strike" against Islamic Jihad fighters. 

Hamas announced on Saturday the death of 11 people in an Israeli strike that hit the tents of displaced civilians near a hospital in Rafah, a town at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army claimed for its part to have carried out "a precision strike" against fighters of Islamic Jihad, the second armed group in the Gaza Strip, and to have caused "no damage to the hospital in the area".

“Health workers and civilians are not a target and must be protected”

"Eleven people were killed and around 50 others injured, including children, by Israeli occupying forces who targeted the tents of displaced people and a gathering of people near the gate of the Al-Emirati maternity hospital" in Rafah, said the ministry's spokesperson in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra, in a statement, specifying that a paramedic was killed in this strike.

Images posted on social networks, the origin of which AFP was unable to independently verify, show several bleeding people lying on the road and rescuers caring for the injured.

An AFP journalist on the scene saw injured people being taken on stretchers to another hospital in Rafah.

"There was suddenly a big explosion. They (the Israelis) bombed a square full of people. (...) There are a lot of dead," Belal Abou Jekhleh, a resident of Rafah, told AFP .

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“Health workers and civilians are not a target and must be protected at all times,” he added, calling for a “ceasefire.”

Nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are crowded into Rafah, the vast majority displaced by Israeli fighting and air raids in the rest of the besieged Gaza Strip.

The war was sparked on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to a count of AFP produced from official Israeli data.

In retaliation, Israel vowed to "annihilate" Hamas and launched a vast land and air offensive which left more than 30,300 dead in Gaza, the vast majority civilians.