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It was not clear if the strike hit within a zone that Israeli forces had designated for the displaced.
As many as 25 people were killed and 50 wounded on Friday in a strike amid tents housing displaced people in Al-Mawasi, a coastal community in the southern Gaza Strip, near the city of Rafah, according to aid agencies and Gazan health officials.
The Israeli military said “the incident is under review.”
Al-Mawasi contains a zone where the Israeli military has told people fleeing the fighting in Rafah to go for their safety, though such zones have also come under fire during the war. It was unclear from the accounts of Gazan officials whether the attack was within the zone.
The Israeli military said its initial inquiry showed “no indication” of a strike within the safer zone. It did not say whether it had struck elsewhere in Al-Mawasi, but photos and videos emerging from the scene made clear that there had been a strike.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its volunteers counted 18 dead and 35 injured people from the attack. The Health Ministry in Gaza later said 25 people were killed and 50 wounded. The International Committee of the Red Cross said its nearby field hospital had received 22 dead and 45 wounded, though it was not clear whether all the casualties were taken there.
Gazan authorities said it was an Israeli military strike. The Red Cross statement did not say who was responsible, but described “heavy-caliber projectiles,” suggesting the kinds of weapons used by Israel, not Hamas.
Dr. Marwan Al-Homs, the coordinator of the Red Cross field hospital, said the majority of the casualties taken to the hospital were women and children, as well as some young men.
The Red Cross said in a statement that projectiles fell within meters from its office and residences in Al-Mawasi on Friday afternoon, damaging the structure, which was “surrounded by hundreds of displaced people living in tents.” The group called it a “grave security incident,” one of several it had experienced in recent days, and that stray bullets had hit the structure in the past.
It is not clear what the target of the strike was. Hamas and allied groups at war with Israel routinely operate among the civilian population. Israel says civilians suffer casualties as a result when it aims at militants; Palestinians accuse Israel of striking indiscriminately, or even aiming at noncombatants.
Rafah, which borders Egypt, has been the focal point of the Israeli military campaign since early May. About a million people displaced from other parts of Gaza crowded into Rafah earlier in the war, then fled again when the Israeli offensive there began. Many of them went to Al-Mawasi, where aid groups say there is woefully inadequate shelter, sanitation, water and food.
In the past, Al-Mawasi area has also been subject to Israeli strikes, resulting in the deaths of dozens of civilians sheltering in tent encampments.
— Anjana Sankar
Key Developments
Armenia is the latest country to recognize a Palestinian state, and other news.
Armenia is recognizing a Palestinian state, its foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday, a largely symbolic move that adds to the international pressure on Israel over its war in Gaza. In response, Israel said it had summoned Armenia’s ambassador for a “harsh reprimand.” More than 140 countries and the Holy See have recognized a Palestinian state — including Spain, Norway and Ireland who jointly did so last month — though most Western European countries and the United States have not.
An influential member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition was caught on tape telling settlers in the occupied West Bank that the government is engaged in a stealthy campaign to impose control on the territory for the long term. In a leaked recording, the official, Bezalel Smotrich, can be heard suggesting that the goal was to deter the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with two senior Israeli officials on Thursday, the same day that the White House and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded barbs. In the meeting with Ron Dermer, a close adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, and Tzachi Hanegbi, the national security adviser, Mr. Blinken reiterated the United States’ “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” according to a statement from the State Department.
The Israeli military said that it struck a missile launch site that belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group in the Gaza Strip, embedded within a shelter for displaced Palestinians of Khan Younis. “Prior to the strike, various measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians,” the military said in a statement on Friday.
U.N. chief warns Israel and Hezbollah of the risk of a wider war.
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After months of escalating violence along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the chief of the United Nations warned on Friday that “the risk for the conflict in the Middle East to widen is real — and must be avoided.”
Speaking to reporters in New York, the chief, Secretary General António Guterres, said that “one rash move” by Israel or Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese group targeting Israel in allegiance with Hamas fighters in Gaza, could trigger a “catastrophe that goes far beyond the border and, frankly, beyond imagination.”
World leaders have tried for months to calm tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, trying to prevent a full-fledged war. But instead of quelling the conflict, strikes and counterstrikes across the border have become more intense — and the rhetoric of leaders on both sides has only become more bellicose in recent days, prompting Mr. Guterres to express what he called “profound concern” that all-out war would erupt.
“Many lives have already been lost, tens of thousands of people have been displaced and homes and livelihoods have been destroyed,” Mr. Guterres said. He added that “the people of the region and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”
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Ever since Hezbollah began trading fire with Israeli forces in the wake of the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, over 100 civilians in Israel and Lebanon have been killed, and more than 150,000 have been displaced from their homes. The exchanges have also sparked wildfires on both sides of the border.
The Israeli military said in statements on Friday that it had “successfully intercepted a suspicious aerial target that crossed from Lebanese territory” and that “a number of launches were identified crossing from Lebanon into several areas in northern Israel.” The military said that it responded with artillery fire in southern Lebanon on Friday and aircraft strikes on “terror targets” in four areas, including Hezbollah military structures, and that “throughout the night” Israeli fighter jets had “struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure.”
Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, said in a post on social media on Friday that “Israel cannot allow the Hezbollah terror organization to continue attacking its territory and citizens, and soon we will make the necessary decisions.” He added that “the free world must unconditionally stand with Israel” against Iran and the militant groups that it backs.
“Our war is also your war,” he said.
Mr. Katz’s comments were an apparent response to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militia, who said on Wednesday that there would be “no place safe from our missiles and our drones” in Israel if a full-fledged war broke out.
Mr. Nasrallah also threatened to draw Cyprus into the conflict if it allowed Israel to use its airports and bases in a wider regional war. Cyprus and Israel have a bilateral defense agreement, and the countries have conducted joint exercises in the past. But President Nikos Christodoulides of Cyprus said that his country was “absolutely not involved in any way,” in remarks posted on social media.
Mr. Nasrallah’s threat confirmed the fears of world leaders trying to contain the conflict, highlighting how quickly the fighting could further escalate and extend. President Biden, hoping to defuse the simmering conflict, dispatched one of his senior aides, Amos Hochstein, to Israel on Monday and to Lebanon on Tuesday to press for a diplomatic solution.
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
— Ephrat Livni
The battle for Rafah, in its seventh week as Israeli forces push westward, has left a trail of destruction.
Israeli forces pressed farther into the southern Gazan city of Rafah on Friday, seeking to dismantle the remaining Hamas battalions there after a six-week battle that has left a critical border crossing gutted by fire and wide stretches of the city severely damaged.
The Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, a pivotal portal between Gaza and the outside world, has been destroyed, seemingly dashing hopes that it could be reopened in the near future.
Images of the destruction throughout Rafah are reminiscent of scenes in Gaza City and Khan Younis, where Israel’s bombardment, and street battles between Israeli forces and Hamas militants embedded in civilian areas, have left behind islands of rubble and craters where there had been buildings and roads.
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“We’re worried that the city will be rendered unlivable,” said Ahmed al-Soufi, the mayor of Rafah.
Israeli reporters who toured Rafah on Wednesday shared photos on social media of the crossing, which showed one of the main border crossing buildings in tatters, access roads torn up, and a mosque damaged. Since the war began, it had been the only official route between Gaza and Egypt.
It was unclear who was responsible for most of the destruction at the crossing. In a statement, the Israeli army, which has controlled it since early May, said a fire had broken out at the main terminal over a month ago. It said it was reviewing the possibility that the fire was caused by Hamas shooting mortar shells toward the crossing.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, have claimed responsibility for firing mortar shells at the crossing 11 times in May and June.
Since the start of the war, the Rafah border crossing has been the only way out of Gaza for nearly all Palestinians, as Israel has only allowed a very small number to enter its territory or travel through it. The crossing has been a lifeline for sick and wounded people urgently in need of treatment abroad.
Israeli officials contend that Hamas had four organized battalions of fighters in Rafah before the offensive began. Israel’s forces are now pressing further westward into neighborhoods of the city they haven’t entered before, said an Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational activities.
The army, the official said, has been surprised by the large number of booby-trapped homes, saying the military’s assessment was Hamas militants have spent months lacing homes with explosives. Earlier in June, four Israeli soldiers were killed and several more wounded after militants blew up a building.
Since Israel first invaded Rafah, around 500 militants have been killed, according to the assessment of the army’s 162 Division, the official added.
Earlier this week Col. Benny Aharon, the commander of Israel’s 401st Brigade, suggested that the army was nearing the completion of its operation in Rafah.
“It will take us a few weeks to be able to say: ‘We defeated them,’” he told reporters earlier this week. “When I say ‘defeat’, this means destroying capabilities and terrorists and dealing with the above and below ground.”
But Israeli soldiers have returned repeatedly to areas in Gaza they had already fought in. Reminded of that, Col. Aharon said it was clear to him that “this is an infinite pursuit.”
Israel’s Channel 13, one of several Israeli outlets brought by the army to Rafah this week, broadcast images of a tunnel shaft along the border with Egypt. The tunnel, Col. Aharon said, went toward both Egypt and Gaza’s interior.
Israeli officials have said a key objective of the operation in Rafah was to demolish tunnels between Egypt and Gaza that have allowed Hamas to replenish its weapons supply over the years.
Channel 13 also showed rocket launchers buried in the ground beside the border.
Earlier in the war, when Israel ordered the evacuation of northern and central Gaza, it directed civilians to Rafah, where more than a million displaced people sought shelter, packed into schools, tents and homes. Much of the international community had been demanding Israel back off entering the border town, arguing it would have catastrophic consequences for the civilian population, many of whom have been displaced multiple times since the start of the war.
One of the most concerning consequences of the operation, humanitarian officials say, is that it has impeded the delivery and distribution of vital aid in Gaza.
Since Israel started its offensive in the city, most of the people there have fled once again.
— Adam Rasgon Reporting from Jerusalem
Netanyahu’s quarrels with the White House, his military and his coalition partners have escalated.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week engaged in increasingly public spats with his military brass, his right-wing coalition partners and his most powerful supporter, the White House. The cascading conflicts — all with allies who are on his side in the battle against Hamas — have renewed difficult questions about the future of the war and about the Israeli leader’s own political survival.
“We are fighting on several fronts,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement this week directed at his squabbling coalition partners — whom he told to “get a hold of themselves” — but he could easily have been describing himself.
In the ninth month of the war, Mr. Netanyahu finds himself increasingly isolated. His pledges of “total victory” against Hamas are at odds with his military leadership, which has signaled that it wants to ease combat operations in Gaza and that only a cease-fire can bring home the remaining Israeli hostages. He has alternately placated and slapped down his right-wing allies, whose support he needs to remain in office but whose hawkish stances on the war and on Palestinian rights have drawn international condemnation.
Analysts say the combative strategy reflects Mr. Netanyahu’s need to balance competing interests — to show a domestic audience that he is standing up for the country amid the rising global outcry over the war, while keeping his right-wing allies just close enough that they don’t abandon him.
Still, he is picking a high-stakes fight with the Biden administration, which has provided political cover for Israel’s devastating military campaign while supplying it with key weapons. On Monday, President Biden overcame congressional opposition to finalize one of the biggest U.S. arms sales ever to Israel, an $18 billion deal for F-15 jets.
The next day, however, Mr. Netanyahu posted a video lashing out at the United States for withholding some heavy munitions, an apparent reference to the Biden administration’s decision to withhold a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs over concerns about their use in densely populated parts of Gaza.
That video drew a sharp response on Thursday from John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, who said that there was “no other country that’s done more, or will continue to do more, than the United States to help Israel defend itself.” The Israeli leader’s comments were “deeply disappointing and certainly vexing to us,” Kirby added.
Soon afterward, Mr. Netanyahu issued a statement saying that he was “willing to absorb personal attacks if that is what it takes for Israel to get the arms and ammunition it needs in its war for survival.”
Though the Biden administration has expressed increasing frustration with the direction of the war, there is little sign that Mr. Biden will significantly scale back U.S. support for Israel in an election year. Mr. Netanyahu retains the strong backing of Republicans in Washington, who led an effort to invite the Israeli leader to address a joint session of Congress next month, an apparent bid to make some progressive Democrats’ opposition to the war a campaign issue.
More pressing for Mr. Netanyahu at home is the feud with his military leadership, which also escalated this week.
Going public with frustrations that have simmered for months, the armed forces’ chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, appeared to criticize Mr. Netanyahu’s oft-repeated call for “absolute victory,” saying: “The idea that it is possible to destroy Hamas, to make Hamas vanish — that is throwing sand in the eyes of the public.”
The military has indicated that it wants to wind down the fighting in Gaza, saying on Wednesday that it was relaxing some wartime restrictions on Israeli communities near the border and that it was very close to defeating Hamas’s forces in Rafah, the city it has described as the armed group’s last stronghold.
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But Mr. Netanyahu has shown no sign of wanting to end the war, refusing to endorse a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal to pause hostilities, free hostages and open talks on a permanent truce. On Thursday, after meeting with families of hostages at his office in Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu signaled that he wanted Israeli troops to keep fighting.
“When we are in Gaza, the pressure changes; our activity creates opportunities to return the hostages,” he said, according to a statement from his office. “We will not leave the Gaza Strip until all of the hostages return, and we will not leave until we eliminate Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.”
That position is backed by his right-wing cabinet ministers, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister for national security. But they both oppose amending Israeli laws to allow ultra-Orthodox Jews to be conscripted, a change that the military says is needed in order to ease the war’s toll on its forces — and another point of contention between the army leadership and Mr. Netanyahu.
The Israeli leader has also tussled with Mr. Ben-Gvir, however. After the far-right minister demanded a greater role in wartime decision making, Mr. Netanyahu dissolved his informal war cabinet this week in what analysts said was an effort to exclude Mr. Ben-Gvir. A member of Mr. Netanyahu’s party later accused Mr. Ben-Gvir of leaking state secrets.
Amos Harel, a columnist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, which is often critical of Mr. Netanyahu, wrote that the prime minister was “taking shots” at “everyone in his way.”
“In security, in politics, in Israel’s foreign relations, Netanyahu continues to pursue a policy of brinkmanship, and in a way that has become far more extreme during the war,” he wrote in a column published Friday.
— Shashank Bengali
As the war stretches on, Gaza’s high school students miss their final exams and put plans on hold.
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Karim al-Masri was supposed to start his final exams on Saturday morning, just a few weeks shy of graduating. Instead, he spent his morning filling bags of water to freeze into ice, which he sold to support his family.
“I should have been studying and preparing for my final exams,” said Mr. al-Masri, 18. But, more than eight months into the war, “I’m spending my days working to provide for my family to cope with the situation.”
Mr. al-Masri was one of nearly 39,000 students in Gaza who were unable to take their high school final examinations scheduled to begin on Saturday across the Palestinian territories and in Jordan, and who would not be able to graduate, according to the Palestinian Education Ministry.
The war has devastated Gaza’s education system, which was already struggling after several wars and escalations since 2008. At least 625,000 children are missing out on education in Gaza, according to UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinians, with schools shut since the war began in October, just over a month into the school year.
More than 76 percent of schools in Gaza would require rebuilding or major rehabilitation to become functional after Israel’s monthslong offensive, according to UNRWA, which operates many schools in the Gaza Strip. The majority of these schools have been used as shelters to house the many displaced families in Gaza, most of whom are living in miserable conditions.
Mr. al-Masri said that he dreamed of studying information technology at the Islamic University of Gaza or the University College of Applied Sciences — both of which have been destroyed by Israeli bombardment. All of Gaza’s 12 universities have been severely damaged or destroyed by fighting, according to the United Nations.
Instead of pinning his hopes on going back to school and graduating, he said the war had shifted his priorities, and he was now focused on working to continue supporting his family. While selling ice in his town of Deir al Balah in central Gaza, Mr. al-Masri said he often walked past his school, where “the classrooms have turned into shelters,” and when he peeks inside, he is “filled with agony.”
Islam al-Najjar, 18, who was also supposed to be taking her first final exam on Saturday, said that her school in Deir al Balah, to which many Gazans have fled from Israel’s Rafah offensive, had also been turned into a shelter.
“I can’t imagine going back to see my school, a place where we learn, turned into a shelter full of displaced people living in miserable conditions,” she said.
“When we do go back, we won’t be seeing all of the same faces,” she said, referring to her classmate, two teachers and her principal who had been killed during the war.
Ms. al-Najjar remains hopeful about the possibility of being able to go back to school and graduating. Despite the “many hurdles to everything you want to achieve in Gaza,” she said, she dreams of studying abroad and has set her sights on Harvard University or the University of Oxford to study business.
“I was very excited for my final year of school and to begin a new chapter,” said Ms. al-Najjar, the eldest in her family, who had been planning her graduation celebrations before the war started. “But of course, the war put a stop to everything.”
“Why does the spring of our life coincide with the fall of our country?” said Ms. al-Najjar. “Is it our fault that we dared to dream?”
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting from London.
— Hiba Yazbek reporting from Nazareth, Israel
