More than 50 people killed in Israeli strikes on Rafah: Hamas health ministry

The health ministry of the Hamas-run territory in southern Gaza reported that before dawn on Monday, heavy airstrikes had killed at least 52 people in the heavily populated Rafah area. After fleeing shelling elsewhere on the Strip, almost half of Gaza’s population now resides in the city, which was rocked by a series of heavy strikes that AFP photographers and witnesses witnessed billowing over it. The Hamas administration claims that the attacks targeted three mosques and fourteen homes in various districts of Rafah. In a statement released on Monday, the Israeli military claimed to have “conducted a series of strikes on terror targets in the area of Shaboura in the southern Gaza Strip” and to have finished the operations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his army to prepare a ground offensive on Rafah, Gaza’s last major population centre that troops have yet to enter after Hamas’s October 7 attacks sparked the war. About 1.4 million Palestinians have crowded into Rafah, with many living in tents while food, water and medicine are becoming increasingly scarce.