Devastation after Israeli strike on Rafah camp

Men cleared away the charred debris of shelters and children salvaged food in Gaza's southern city of Rafah on Monday after an Israeli strike torched a camp for displaced Palestinians.

"People were not just injured or killed, but charred," 24-year-old Mohammed Hamad told the media in the aftermath of the strike that killed at least 45 people.

The death toll came from the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which also said that 249 people were wounded in the strike.

"My cousin's daughter, a child no more than 13, was among the martyrs. She had no features at all because shrapnel tore off her face," Hamad said.

Israel's military said its aircraft "struck a Hamas compound in Rafah" on Sunday night, killing two senior officials for the Palestinian militant group in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians mourn over the bodies of relatives killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on Monday. AP

The strike caused a fire that blazed through the camp in the Rafah governorate's Tal Al-Sultan area, reducing tents and shelters to ashes.

Footage released by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society showed chaotic nighttime scenes of ambulances racing to the attack site and evacuating the wounded, including children.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on social media platform X that a first response point it supports in Tal Al-Sultan had received 28 dead and 180 wounded, with many suffering "from traumatic injuries, notably due to shrapnel, fractures and burns".

Patients were transferred to nearby field hospitals after being stabilised, MSF emergency coordinator Samuel Johann said.

But "the health system was decimated and no health facility in Gaza can currently cope with an event with this many casualties," he said.

Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike in Rafah on Monday. AP

As Palestinians cleared the site on Monday, only blackened metal sheeting and charred planks remained, the tent shelters having been all but obliterated.

"When these rockets fall on a tower block there are dozens of martyrs, so what about when they are tents?" lamented a man called Hamad.

"When we heard the sound (of the explosion), the sky suddenly lit up," displaced Palestinian Muhannad, an eyewitness, told the media.

Agence France-Presse