Israel kills 2 children in kindergarten attack in southern Gaza

Two children have been killed overnight in an Israeli attack on a kindergarten in Rafah in southern Gaza, where displaced people were sheltering, the health ministry says.

Palestine’s official WAFA news agency, citing medical and local sources, reported that the two little girls were killed in the kindergarten attack at dawn on Sunday in the east of Rafah and dozens of others were injured.

“The children were just sleeping and suddenly the bombardment happened. One of my children died while three managed to escape,” resident Ahmad Bassam al-Jamal was quoted as saying by AFP.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 92 Palestinians were killed overnight by Israeli attacks.

Aljazeera correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah said last night was “another sleepless night” for 1.9 million displaced Palestinians in Rafah as the Israeli military intensified its bombing across the city, including residential buildings as well as public facilities.

“To the east of Rafah city, due to the intensity of the bombing of residential buildings, flying debris and shrapnel fell on tents, where people were sheltering,” he said.

He said the “heartbreaking part” is that the shrapnel hit a kindergarten and killed the two little girls.

He added that relentless massive artillery shelling and air strikes that lasted into the early hours of this morning critically injured many people.

According to Mahmoud, displaced people have “nowhere else safer to go to seek shelter.”

Israeli forces have been widely attacking the eastern areas of Rafah, especially in the al-Salam neighborhood adjacent to the city of Khan Younis, reports say.

The death toll from air raids in eastern Rafah has risen to 24 people during the past 24 hours, while Israelis have formerly declared the city a “safe zone” in southern Gaza.

Israel has intensified its attacks on Rafah in the south near the border with Egypt after Israel’s minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that the regime’s forces will push on to Rafah.

“Victory won’t be complete unless the military expands into Rafah,” Gallant said.

Rafah 'pressure cooker of despair' amid Israel threats

The UN says it fears "for what comes next" for Rafah, a "safe zone" that Israel threatened to attack.

Al Jazeera’s reporter, Tareq Abu Azzoum said that humanitarian supplies being delivered into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Crossing are very limited due to Israeli restrictions.

“People are going through drastic humanitarian conditions in Rafah with [a] very deep shortage of food and drinkable water,” he said.

A spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Jens Laerke said on Friday that “Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next.”

Rafah, a town of around 200,000 people, is now sheltering more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people population in overcrowded conditions, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 27,238 people, mostly women and children since it launched the war in the besieged territory on October 7. More than 66,452 Palestinians have been wounded in Israeli attacks, according to the health ministry.

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