ActionAid UK, the British chapter of an international relief organization, reported the fatalities on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, Israeli warplanes fired eight missiles toward makeshift shelters housing internally-displaced persons in the city’s northwest.
“These shelters were supposed to be safe havens for innocent civilians, yet they became targets of brutal violence,” the organization said.
“Children, women, and men are being burned alive under their tents and shelters,” it noted, warning that the number of fatalities could rise.
Reacting to the massacre, the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas called it an “egregious affront” to a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice, which ordered the Israeli regime to “immediately” halt its offensive against Rafah.
The movement called on all parties, especially Egypt, to pressure the regime into ending its occupation of the city’s Rafah crossing, which borders the country and serves as the main point of entry for vital supplies into Gaza.
Hamas also urged the international community, the United Nations, and all concerned parties to scramble to support the Palestinian nation in the face of the Israeli massacre, which has been seeking to bring about the mass exodus of the Palestinian people and destroy their national cause for the past seven months.
It was referring to an October-present genocidal war that the regime has been waging against Gaza in response to a retaliatory operation by the territory’s Resistance movements.
The war has so far claimed the lives of around 36,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza.
Hamas finally called on the world’s Muslim and Arab peoples to step up their anti-Israeli activism in the face of the genocide.
The Israeli massacre in Rafah was also followed by mass protest rallies across the West Bank, including in the city of Ramallah and the town of Anabta, which is located to the east of the city of Tulkarm in the northern part of the occupied territory.
The Emirati Hospital in Rafah also condemned the Israeli attacks on Rafah as “a heinous massacre.”
Similar demonstrations also erupted elsewhere throughout the region, including at the Baqa’a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan and in front of the Israeli consulate in Istanbul.
In Iraq, enraged people stormed the KFC’s branch in the capital Baghdad, inflicting damage on the restaurant in protest at the United States’ ongoing support for the Israeli regime’s war on Gaza.
SD/PreesTV