Israel-Gaza war live: EU foreign policy chief ‘horrified’ by Rafah attack as Macron says he is ‘outraged’
By Guardian - Yohannes Lowe (now), Lili Bayer and Reged Ahmad (earlier)Mon 27 May 2024 15.20 BST
Josep Borrell condemns attack as Gaza officials say at least 45 people killed in overnight strikes on camp housing displaced people.
EU's foreign policy chief says he is 'horrified' by Israeli airstrikes on Rafah
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said he is “horrified by news coming out of Rafah on Israeli strikes killing dozens of displaced persons, including small children.”
“I condemn this in the strongest terms,” he said, adding: “There is no safe place in Gaza. These attacks must stop immediately. ICJ orders & IHL must be respected by all parties.”
Share4m ago15.20 BST
The United Arab Emirates has condemned what it said was Israel targeting tents of displaced people in Rafah, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
It stressed the importance of implementing the international court of justice’s ruling that demanded Israel immediately halt its offensive in Rafah.
Officials in Gaza said the death toll had risen to 45 from the overnight Israeli strikes on Rafah, which sparked fires that burned displaced people alive in their tents, many of them women and children.
Share14m ago15.10 BSTLisa O'Carroll
Cochav Willian Levison, the father of a 19-year-old boy kidnapped and killed after the 7 October Hamas attack has urged the world not to conflate Hamas with freedom fighters for Palestine.
Sitting with his daughter Mika, he told reporters in Brussels that the EU could be “a knight in shining armour” who could help the release of all 125 remaining hostages.
“Make no mistake, Hamas is a terrorist organisation. It is a tyrannical, extreme Muslim terrorist organisation. It is not a freedom fighter. Hamas doesn’t even pretend to care about its own people and you can see that by their own actions,” he said.
“Look at these pictures. Hamas has reduced our loved ones to pieces of paper. Hamas is using our loved ones as playing cards in some sort of twisted game and I think that every decent human being must cry out that this is not normal.”
He said the relatives of the families would meet any representatives that would talk to them including Ireland and Spain who have been so vocal on the plight of Palestine.
They had met with officials from Hungary and were due to meet a German delegation later on Monday.
By Guardian - Lisa O'Carroll - 27 May 2024 - 14.15 BST
Families of four victims of Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel last October have arrived in Brussels to raise awareness of the plight of hostages at the highest level in the EU.
Mazy Zafrani, aunt of 26-year-old Noa Argamani, who was kidnapped from the Nova festival on 7 October said:
“Noa has been in captivity for 234 days, her mother is very very sick, her only wish is to met her again at least for one hour to give her a hug and be with her.”
She is an only child and her mother has terminal brain cancer, representatives of the Israel foreign affairs minister said.
“We don’t know much about Noa since the video was released in January,” her aunt said.
“We have no other sings from Noa, we don’t know if she is alive, we have no information, not from any international organisation, not from the Red Cross, not from anyone.”
On the verge of tears, she said: This war is very tough for both sides. There are tragedies on both sides. We pray this blood bath will end soon.”
On her right was Sharon Kalderon, the sister in law of Ofer Kalderon, who was kidnapped with his children who were subsequently released.
She said people in Europe needed to understand their suffering as the hostages were rarely spoken about when it came to the Middle East and yet they had no information on their loved ones.
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The scenes we are seeing unfold in Israel and Gaza mark a new chapter in the Middle East conflict. The consequences and scale of losses are already devastating, and the recent attack – and the war that now follows – is likely to shape global politics for years to come.
With correspondents on the ground and reporters updating this liveblog 24/7, the Guardian is well-placed to provide comprehensive, fact-checked reporting, to help all of us make sense of this perilous moment for the region. Reader-funded and free from commercial influence, we can report fearlessly on world events as they develop.
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50m ago14.34 BST
Italy says attacks against civilians in Gaza cannot be justified
Italy said on Monday Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza were no longer justifiable in one of the strongest criticisms Rome has made so far against Israel’s war on the enclave.
“There is an increasingly difficult situation, in which the Palestinian people are being squeezed without regard for the rights of innocent men, women and children who have nothing to do with Hamas and this can no longer be justified,” the country’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, told SkyTG24 TV.
Crosetto said that a difference had to be made between Hamas, the Palestinian militant group responsible for the 7 October attacks on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed, and the Palestinian people.
The latest Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah killed at least 45 Palestinians and injured dozens of others, according to officials. Most of the people who were killed were women, children or elderly.
Israel said the attack was aimed at a Hamas compound, though its top military prosecutor called it “very grave” and said the army regretted any harm to non-combatants.
Italy has repeatedly said that Israel had a right to defend itself from Hamas. Last week, Rome said an international criminal court prosecutor’s decision to seek an arrest warrant for Israeli leaders was “unacceptable”.
Share1h ago14.11 BST
Israeli attack on Rafah tent camp kills at least 45 Palestinians, officials say
The death toll from the Israeli airstrike on a camp for displaced Palestinian people in the southern Gaza city of Rafah has been increased by officials to 45 (from an earlier total of 40).
The attack took place in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood, where thousands were sheltering after Israeli forces began a ground offensive in the east of Rafah over two weeks ago.
More than half of those who were killed were women, children, and elderly people, health officials in Gaza said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise as more people caught in the blaze were in critical condition with severe burns.
Israel’s top military prosecutor called the airstrike “very grave” and said an investigation was under way.
Israeli tanks continued to bombard eastern and central areas of the city in southern Gaza on Monday, killing eight, local health officials said.
Israel has pressed ahead with an offensive on the southernmost part of the strip despite an order from the UN’s top court on Friday to halt the assault, which it said was worsening an already “disastrous” humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
Israel launched its assault on Rafah this month, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee Gaza’s southernmost city, which had become a relative refuge to about half of the territory’s 2.3 million people.
Rafah has also been the main route in for aid, and international organisations say the Israeli operation has cut off the territory and raised the risk of famine.
ShareUpdated at 14.13 BST1h ago14.02 BST
Israeli strike in southern Lebanon kills one person and injures several civilians, officials say
An Israeli strike targeting a motorcycle in southern Lebanon on Monday hit next to a hospital entrance, killing at least one person and injuring several civilians who were gathered outside, local health officials said.
The strike killed the motorcycle driver in the town of Bint Jbeil, according to the Associated Press (AP). It was not immediately clear who the driver was.
Mohammed Suleiman, director of the Salah Ghandour hospital in Bint Jbeil, said they had received one person who had been killed and nine injured in the strike, most of whom were “civilians who were in front of the hospital, where family members and people accompanying the patients usually gather”.
Two of the injured people were in “highly sensitive” condition, he said. The strike also caused minor damage to the hospital, an AP photographer at the scene said.
EU's foreign policy chief says he is 'horrified' by Israeli airstrikes on Rafah
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said he is “horrified by news coming out of Rafah on Israeli strikes killing dozens of displaced persons, including small children.”
“I condemn this in the strongest terms,” he said, adding: “There is no safe place in Gaza. These attacks must stop immediately. ICJ orders & IHL must be respected by all parties.”
Share2h ago13.13 BST
An Al Jazeera correspondent has reported that “continuous” Israeli shelling has targeted the Bir an-Naaja area, west of the Jabaliya refugee camp, in northern Gaza.
Residents in Jabaliya also reported ground fighting earlier on Sunday.
Share2h ago12.57 BST
Haaretz reports that one person was injured in a stabbing in Jerusalem, and that a suspect was shot.
ShareUpdated at 12.57 BST3h ago12.53 BST
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has criticised the country’s government, saying it “is not winning in the war with Hamas and Hezbollah, so it has declared a war on reality”.
Updated at 12.55 BST3h ago11.59 BST
Macron says he is 'outraged' over Israeli airstrikes on camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said that he is “outraged” by the Israeli airstrikes – on a camp housing displaced Palestinians in Rafah – that are reported to have killed at least 40 people.
“These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian citizens. I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire,” he wrote in a tweet on X.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday’s airstrike targeted tents for displaced people near a UN facility in Tal al-Sultan, about 2km (1.2 miles) north-west of the centre of the southern city of Rafah.
Share4h ago11.54 BST
Summary of the day so far...
- Gaza’s civil defence agency said that the death toll had risen to 40 from overnight Israeli strikes that set ablaze tents of displaced Palestinian people in the southern city of Rafah. The agency said that many bodies were “charred” after the strikes triggered a fire that ripped through a displacement centre in northwest Rafah. Qatar’s foreign ministry said the strikes could hinder mediation efforts to reach a ceasefire in the conflict and to secure a hostage release deal.
- Israel’s army had said overnight that its aircraft had “struck a Hamas compound in Rafah”, killing Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, both senior officials for the Palestinian militant group in the occupied West Bank. It added that it was “aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.”
- The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, has said that reports of attacks on families seeking shelter in Rafah in southern Gaza were “horrifying”. “There are reports of mass casualties including children and women among those killed. Gaza is hell on earth. Images from last night are yet another testament to that,” Unrwa wrote on X.
- Relations between the EU and Israel took a nosedive on the eve of the diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state by EU members Ireland and Spain. Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, told Spain that its consulate in Jerusalem will not be allowed to help Palestinians. EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell threw his full weight to support the international criminal court, whose prosecutor is seeking an arrest warrant against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others, including the leader of Hamas. There is a meeting between EU foreign ministers and Middle East Arab leaders today in Brussels in which Israel’s war in Gaza is expected to dominate.
- The international criminal court should investigate as war crimes three Israeli airstrikes that killed 44 Palestinian civilians, including 32 children, in the Gaza Strip last month, Amnesty International said. The strikes – one on al-Maghazi on 16 April, and two on the southern city of Rafah on 19 and 20 April 2024 – also injured at least 20 civilians, the organisation said.
- Israel is investigating the deaths of Palestinians captured during the war in Gaza, as well as a military-run detention camp where a human rights group has alleged abuse of inmates, the armed forces’ chief prosecutor said.
Share4h ago11.35 BST
The UK’s Foreign Office has issued the following statement in reaction to the Israeli airstrikes on Rafah.
An FCDO spokesperson said:
The UK is clear that we do not support a major military operation in Rafah without a plan to protect the hundreds of thousands of civilians who remain there.
The fastest way to end the conflict is to secure a deal which gets the hostages out and allows for a pause in the fighting in Gaza. We must then work with our international partners to turn that pause into a long term sustainable ceasefire.
Ministers are under pressure from MPs and peers to stop arming Israel and the government has been criticised for pausing UK funding to Unrwa after Israel’s so-far unsubstantiated allegations that 12 staff were involved in the Hamas attacks in southern Israel on 7 October.
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Lisa O'Carroll - Guardian