CNN
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Israeli military tanks were seen in central Rafah on Tuesday for the first time since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered Gaza’s southernmost city earlier this month, two eyewitnesses told CNN.
The move comes two days after an Israeli strike on a camp in Gaza’s southernmost city killed dozens of displaced Palestinians on Sunday and amid a push by the international community to stop its assault on the city.
Two further Israeli attacks in Rafah killed at least 29 Palestinians on Tuesday, according to authorities in Gaza.
Alaa Abu Ibrahim, a Rafah resident, told CNN that Israeli tanks were seen at the Al Awda roundabout in the center of the city. Another resident, Salma AlKadoomi, said she saw armored vehicles in the downtown area near the Abu Hashem building.
“These vehicles advanced in the middle of the night,” AlKadoomi told CNN.
Asked about reports of tanks advancing in the city, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said at a media briefing on Tuesday that the military is operating in Rafah in a “targeted” and “precise” way.
“There are still Hamas battalions in Rafah. A couple of days ago launchers from Rafah fired (rockets) to Tel Aviv. Millions of people went into bomb shelters,” he said.
Israel began a limited ground operation in Rafah on May 7, crossing the Philadelphi Corridor – a 14-kilometer (about 8.7-mile) long buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border – and seizing the Palestinian side of the border with Egypt.
“Today and the day before we’ve again detected tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor, those are tunnels going to Sinai,” Hagari said, adding that the IDF is demolishing the tunnels into Sinai, and communicating with the Egyptian government about it.
Egypt has strongly opposed the operation at its border. On Monday, an Egyptian security personnel was killed on the border with Gaza in a shooting that involved Egyptian and Israeli soldiers. Egypt’s state-affiliated Al-Qahera News outlet said that “Palestinian resistance” fighters were also involved.
Some 1.3 million Palestinians were sheltering in Rafah before Israel began its operation there. Around 1 million have fled the city since, according to UN figures.
The Biden administration has warned against a large-scale ground invasion in Rafah unless the wellbeing of civilians can be guaranteed. US President Joe Biden warned in an interview with CNN this month that he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel should it launch a major invasion of Rafah.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan however said last week that he had detected “refinements” to Israel’s plan, which he said was now more “targeted and limited” in scale.
News of the tanks’ movement came as Palestinian officials said two fresh Israeli strikes Tuesday had killed 29 people – at least eight at the Tal al-Sultan camp and 21 at a camp in Al-Mawasi, though the IDF has denied striking a humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi.
The first strike hit three tents at Tal al-Sultan at around 3 a.m. local time, according to residents and a CNN stringer in Rafah. At least eight people were killed and transferred to a field hospital in Tal Al-Sultan camp, according to the Emergency Committee of the Rafah Governorate. CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on the strike at Tal al-Sultan.
The Tal al-Sultan camp is located next to a United Nations warehouse, whose walls were damaged from the strike, according to a video from a CNN stringer on the ground. The camp hit on Tuesday is approximately 150 meters from another displacement camp where an Israeli strike and ensuing fire on Sunday killed at least 45 people.
Video from CNN’s stringer in Tal al-Sultan shows displaced people dismantling their makeshift living arrangements, gathering their belongings and evacuating the area on trucks and donkey carts.
Graphic video shows scale of devastation in Rafah
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, a second strike Tuesday afternoon local time hit a displacement camp in the southern coastal town of Al-Mawasi, killing at least 21 people, including 13 women, and injuring at least 64 people with 10 in critical condition.
However, the Israeli military has denied striking a humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi.
It told CNN in a statement: “Contrary to the reports from the last few hours, the IDF did not strike in the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi.”
CNN has followed up, asking if the IDF has struck elsewhere in Al-Mawasi, such as the UN warehouse that is in the vicinity of the camp, but has not received a reply.
The southern coastal town of Al-Mawasi is north of Rafah and is supposedly a “safe zone.” In early May, the Israeli military ordered people in eastern Rafah to “immediately head to the expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi,” as it stepped up its operations in the southern Gazan city. The Al-Mawasi camp was already crowded with displaced people before civilians in Rafah were ordered to move there. The UN has said it is not “quite suitable” for habitation.
Graphic videos obtained by CNN show several dead bodies lying on sand covered in bloodied blankets with dozens of people shrieking and gathering around them. Children are seen crying next to the bodies of women whose faces are covered in blood.
Sunday’s Israeli strike on the camp sheltering Palestinians in Rafah killed 45 people and injured another 200, sparking an international outcry. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said the civilian casualties were “a tragic error.”
Israel launched an investigation into the event, and on Tuesday the IDF claimed the deadly fire at the camp could not have been caused solely by the weaponry used by Israel.
“Our munitions alone could not have ignited a fire of this size. Our investigation seeks to determine what may have caused such a large fire to ignite,” Hagari said. “We are looking into all possibilities, including the option that weapons stored in a compound next to our target, which we did not know of, may have ignited as a result of this strike.”
He showed aerial footage of a strike on a structure in which he said senior Hamas commanders were meeting and said that the military used two munitions with 17-kilogram (37 lbs) warheads. “This is the smallest munitions that our jets could use.”
“We are working to verify the cause of the fire, it is still too early to be determined,” Hagari said. “Even when we do find the cause of the fire that erupted it won’t make this situation any less tragic.”
Israel’s advance deeper into Rafah comes despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering it to “immediately halt” its military operation there. The UN and some of Israel’s European allies have called on it to abide by the ICJ’s order, saying it is binding.