8 Palestinians, mostly children, killed in Israeli airstrike on Rafah

GAZA CITY, Palestine

At least eight Palestinians were killed Wednesday and others were injured in an Israeli airstrike on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

"Eight citizens from the Ayad family, displaced from Gaza City, including five children and two women, were killed as a result of the bombing of a room in an agricultural land in the Salam neighborhood, south of Rafah," medical sources told Anadolu.

Several Palestinians were also injured in the strike that targeted a home belonging to the Bahabsa family, near the city's eastern cemetery, according to an Anadolu correspondent.

This comes as regional and international concerns are rising on Israeli intensions for a ground attack on Rafah, where around 1.4 million displaced Palestinians have taken refuge from incessant attacks on other parts of the Gaza Strip​​​​​​​

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in which nearly 1,200 people were killed.

More than 33,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and over 76,600 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala