Israel is increasing its airstrikes in Rafah today, despite international outcry over the deadly shelling of a crowded IDP camp in the city, which led to an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation in that sector of the Gaza Strip.

For their part, Spain, Norway and Ireland will formally recognize a Palestinian state today during a press conference in Brussels, as they announced last week, prompting an angry reaction from Israel’s government.

In the field, AFP teams in the city reported in the early hours of the morning that new shelling had been launched in central and western Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army has been conducting ground operations since the beginning of May.

The new airstrikes came amid international outcry and condemnation of the bombing of a displaced persons camp on Sunday night, which killed 45 people and injured 249 others, according to the Gaza Strip health ministry, as it sparked a fire that spread across scenes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the bombing a “tragic accident.”

The Israeli military said it was investigating the civilian deaths after initially saying it had targeted two Hamas operatives with “precision munitions”.

“Outraged”, the US government called on its ally Israel to “take all precautions to protect civilians”, Canadian diplomacy expressed “horror”, French President Emmanuel Macron “indignation”.

About 10,000 people gathered near the Israeli embassy in the French capital to denounce the bombing. The compact crowd held Palestinian flags, banners and placards that read slogans such as “don’t kill a child, neither Israeli nor Palestinian,” “Stop the bombing, freedom for Palestine,” “We are Rafa’s children,” “Rafa, Gaza, we are with you” and so on, AFP journalists found out.

Extraordinary meeting of the SA

“I condemn Israel’s actions which have killed dozens of innocent civilians, who were just asking to be protected from this murderous war. There is no safe location in Gaza. This horror must stop,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“To say it was a ‘mistake’ means nothing to those who were killed, to those who mourn, to those who are trying to save lives,” said UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths. calling the shelling of the displaced persons camp “totally unacceptable”, which “causes disgust”.

The UN Security Council was convened for an emergency meeting this afternoon (New York time), diplomatic sources said.

The emergency meeting, behind closed doors, was called at the request of Algeria, a non-permanent member of the Security Council representing Arab countries, and was supported by Slovenia, the sources explained.

The UN has called for a “full and transparent” investigation into the shelling of the Rafah camp.

Palestinian Civil Protection reported several “charred” bodies in the fire that swept through the Barkasat displaced persons camp, run by the UNRWA, northwest of Rafah.

“We saw bodies charred, dismembered (…) mutilated, children, women and elderly people” who were injured, said Mohammed al-Mughair, a Civil Protection worker in the Gaza Strip.

“Hell on Earth”

Images taken by workers of the Palestinian Red Crescent, which pointed out that the bombed site had been designated by the Israeli military as a “humanitarian zone”, show the chaos: ambulances with sirens screaming, ambulances in the middle of the night in the burning camp where the wounded are staying, among the children.

Footage taken by AFP cameramen after the bombing shows charred bodies inside tents or vehicle trunks.

“People weren’t just killed or injured, they were burned alive,” said Mohammad Hamad, 24. “My cousin’s daughter, a 13-year-old child, is among the ‘witnesses’. Her features were almost unrecognizable, shards tore her face.”

“Last night’s images are tangible evidence that Rafa has turned into hell on Earth,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said via X, adding that UNRWA workers are “missing”.

After the International Court of Justice

The deadly shelling of the camp came hours after the city fired eight rockets at Tel Aviv, an action claimed by Hamas’s military arm, and also two days after a new ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the top of the UN judicial body, which on Friday ordered Israel to stop its operations in Rafah.

According to the United Nations, Israeli ground operations have already forced, in about three weeks, about 800,000 Palestinians to flee, in other words people who had taken refuge in Rafah because of the war to be displaced again.

The war erupted when Hamas’ military wing launched an unprecedented raid on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7, killing more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. data.

Of the other 252 people abducted and taken to the Palestinian enclave, 121 are believed to be still being held hostage there, but 37 of them are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli military.

Israel’s wide-scale, devastating military retaliatory operations, whose political and military leadership have vowed to wipe out Hamas, have so far killed at least 36,050 people in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Islamist movement’s health ministry.

Egypt, which is mediating with Qatar and the US in diplomatic efforts to conclude a ceasefire agreement, condemned the “deliberate shelling” launched by the Israeli army against “displaced persons’ tents”.

For its part, Qatar warned that Israeli shelling of Rafah could “complicate mediation efforts”, as the UN warned of an imminent threat of famine in the besieged Gaza Strip, where most hospitals are no longer functioning.