CNN
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In his speech to Congress on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that in his current go to to Rafah, when he requested what number of civilians have been killed in Rafah, the commander instructed him “virtually none, aside from a single incident the place shrapnel from a bomb hit a Hamas weapons depot and unintentionally killed two dozen folks.”
Info First: Netanyahu could have been instructed that, however the declare itself is verifiably false: A number of strikes in Rafah have resulted in civilian casualties.
The “incident” Netanyahu referenced occurred in Could and killed a minimum of 45 folks at a camp for displaced Palestinians. The airstrike injured greater than 200 after a hearth broke out on the camp following the strike, most of them girls and kids, in keeping with the Gaza Well being Ministry and Palestinian medics.
In the identical week of that strike, at least 29 Palestinians have been killed in two separate Israeli assaults on displacement camps in Rafah, in keeping with Palestinian and UN officers.
CNN has seen firsthand video shot by stringers in Rafah and spoken to a number of well being officers, humanitarian staff and eyewitnesses who’ve reported civilian fatalities because of Israel’s navy assault on the southern metropolis.
Gaza’s Ministry of Well being doesn’t distinguish in its reporting between combatant and civilian deaths however has beforehand mentioned that some 70% of casualties in all of Gaza have been girls and kids.