Strikes continue in Gaza as World Court orders Israel to halt Rafah assault

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Israeli forces stepped up military strikes on Gaza on Friday, residents and medics said, with planes bombing targets in the southern city of Rafah even as the U.N.’s top court ordered Israel to halt its offensive there.

Heavy fighting was also reported in Jabalia, in the north, where Israel’s military said it had recovered the bodies of three hostages killed during the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 that triggered the war.

In Rafah, where an escalating Israeli assault has sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from what was one of the few remaining places of refuge, residents reported intensifying aerial and ground bombardment in the south and centre of the city that borders Egypt.

As the fighting raged, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, said the situation in Rafah was now “disastrous” and ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive”.

The ruling was in response to a request by South Africa in part of a wider case accusing Israel of genocide.

Israel has repeatedly dismissed that accusation as baseless and had signalled it would ignore any ruling to halt its offensive by the court, which has no enforcement powers. It says it has no choice but to attack Rafah to root out the last battalions of Hamas fighters it believes are sheltering there.

Residents and Palestinian media reported a series of strikes hitting roads and houses in the Shaboura neighbourhood in central Rafah shortly after the ICJ ruling was read out in The Hague.

Israel launched its assault on Gaza following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people and saw more than 250 hostages seized, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s incursion has killed more than 35,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.

In northern Gaza, medics said at least five Palestinians were killed when houses were hit in Jabalia and more were believed to be trapped under rubble, but that the area could not be reached due to the intensity of the bombardment.

The Israeli military said it had recovered the bodies of three hostages taken into Gaza after they were killed on Oct. 7.

It said the bodies of Hanan Yablonka, Michel Nisenbaum and Orion Hernandez Radoux were recovered overnight in a joint operation by the army and the intelligence services in Jabalia.

Israel says its twin goals in Gaza are bringing back the remaining hostages and destroying Hamas.

“We will not stop fighting for their freedom,” said military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari in a televised statement announcing the recovery of the three bodies. “Every decent country would do the same.”

Simultaneous Israeli assaults on the northern and southern edges of Gaza this month have caused a new exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their homes, and have cut off the main access routes for aid, raising the risk of famine.

Israel had said its forces cleared Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, months earlier in the war. But it returned there this month saying it needed to prevent Islamist militants regrouping, and the area has seen intense fighting in recent weeks.

Residents said on Friday tanks had destroyed the local market and bulldozers continued to raze shops and property in Jabalia’s narrow alleys. Hamas’s armed wing said its fighters had engaged three tanks there.

Tanks also advanced close to the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, where medics said Israeli fire had caused the suspension of operations at the last functioning medical facility in northern Gaza Strip.

Also, some of the food supplies waiting to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt have begun to rot as the Rafah border crossing remains shut to aid deliveries for a third week and people inside the Palestinian enclave face worsening hunger.

Rafah was a main entry point for humanitarian relief as well as some commercial supplies before Israel stepped up its military offensive on the Gazan side of the border on May 6 and took control of the crossing from the Palestinian side.

Egyptian officials and sources say humanitarian operations are at risk from military activity and that Israel needs to hand the crossing back to Palestinians before it starts operating again.

Israel and the United States have called on Egypt, which is also worried about the risk of Palestinians being displaced from Gaza, to allow the border to reopen.

Meanwhile the backlog of aid on the road between the Egyptian side of the crossing and the town of al-Arish, about 45 km (28 miles) west of Rafah and an arrival point for international aid donations, has been building up.

One truck driver, Mahmoud Hussein, said his goods had been loaded on his vehicle for a month, gradually spoiling in the sun. Some of the foodstuffs are being discarded, others sold of cheap.

“Apples, bananas, chicken and cheese, a lot of things have gone rotten, some stuff has been returned and is being sold for a quarter of its price,” he said, crouching under his truck for shade.

“I’m sorry to say that the onions we’re carrying will at best be eaten by animals because of the worms in them.”

Aid deliveries for Gaza through Rafah began in late October, two weeks after the start of the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The flow of relief has often been slowed by Israeli inspections and military activity inside Gaza and the amount reaching the enclave’s 2.3 million residents has been far below needs, aid officials say.

A global hunger monitor has warned of imminent famine in parts of Gaza.

Since May 5, no trucks have crossed through Rafah and very few through the nearby Israeli crossing of Kerem Shalom, according to U.N. data.

The amount of aid waiting in Egypt’s northern Sinai was now very large, and some had been stuck for more than two months, said Khaled Zayed, head of the Egyptian Red Crescent in the area.

“Some aid packages require a certain temperature … We coordinate on this with specialists who are highly trained in the storage of food and medical supplies,” he said.

“We hope the border will reopen as soon as possible.”

KSrelief, a Saudi-funded charity, has more than 350 trucks carrying items including food and medical supplies waiting to pass through Rafah, but has had to offload flour because of the risk of it rotting, the group’s supervisor general Abdullah Al Rabeeah said.

“We pack and send but also we have to recheck. It is a big burden,” he told Reuters.

Some food has been sold at cut price on the local market in northern Sinai, leading to the confiscation of stocks of rotten eggs, said local officials from Egypt’s ministry of supply.

Inside Gaza, there have also been scares about the quality of delayed food deliveries that made it in before Rafah closed, or through other crossings.

Palestinian medical and police officials that used to check goods coming into Gaza had been unable to do so during Israel’s offensive, said Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office.

“There is a big problem as many of the goods that enter the Gaza Strip are unfit for human use and are unhealthy,” he said.

“Therefore, the health ministry issued the warning statement to raise public awareness that people should examine the goods before eating them or sharing them with their families.”