In his speech to Congress on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that during his recent visit to Rafah, when he asked how many civilians were killed in Rafah, the commander told him “practically none, with the exception of a single incident where shrapnel from a bomb hit a Hamas weapons depot and unintentionally killed two dozen people.”
Facts First: Netanyahu may have been told that, but the claim itself is verifiably false: Multiple strikes in Rafah have resulted in civilian casualties.
The “incident” Netanyahu referenced occurred in May and killed at least 45 people at a camp for displaced Palestinians. The airstrike injured more than 200 after a fire broke out at the camp following the strike, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Palestinian medics.
In the same week of that strike, at least 29 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli attacks on displacement camps in Rafah, according to Palestinian and UN officials.
CNN has seen firsthand video shot by stringers in Rafah and spoken to several health officials, humanitarian workers and eyewitnesses who have reported civilian fatalities as a result of Israel’s military assault on the southern city.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health does not distinguish in its reporting between combatant and civilian deaths but has previously said that some 70% of casualties in all of Gaza have been women and children.
