We begin in southern Gaza, where the Israeli military has
carried out overnight attacks on the city of Rafa.
At least 63 Palestinians have been killed,
multiple strikes targeted the vicinity of the Kuwait Hospital and
crowds of injured Palestinians,
including children, have streamed into the overburdened facility.
And Israel's defence minister says 2 captains were rescued during
the operation.
They've been identified as 60 year old Fernando Marman and
70 year old Louise Hard.
Both have been flown to hospital in Israel and the
military says they're in good health.
I'm very happy to announce that this night
2 released hostages landed here at Chiba Medical Center,
Israel's largest hospital. They were received in our ER
and initial examination were conducted by our
ER staff and they are in a stable condition and
we intend to continue and fold them up for the
coming
days until we'll be for sure clear of their medical
situation.
Our correspondent Honey Mahmoud is joining us on the phone
from
Rafa now. And Honey, over the past few hours,
our colleague Tadik has been reporting on a significant increase
in Israeli strikes on Rafa and also fighting around Rafa.
What can you tell us about what's happening there now?
Yes, overnight the attacks seem to be only intensifying and
with an increased intensity in the artillery shelling.
And it seems like the Israeli military
was using all of its
military arsenal, with the exception,
of course, of a nuclear power,
just to point that out.
But there were there were quad captors,
attack drones, there were helicopters,
who were fighters, jets, the artillery shelling tanks.
The old at once. It started from midnight as the
time lapse of now is the speed.
There's still sound of explanation
from the eastern part of the
city of Rafa has well as the northern part.
That's the border area between Honey
and and Rafa city. And the initial report that we're
getting right now is overnight attacks targeted
residential homes on the eastern part of the city.
There were targets of public facilities,
infrastructures that including roads and main main routes in connecting
communities
with the
city. All of this have been mounting the pressure on
people.
They can safely say that it was a sleepless,
restless night for the vast majority
of the the people in Rafah
city here and still continuing to happen.
Right now there is a denser presence of attack,
a drone just making it very difficult for any possible
movement in or out residential home.
There is the
state of panic and fear and for a lot of
people
this is that the beginning.
For them, this is probably the beginning of the offensive.
The offensive, of course, of the Israeli military has been
warning about for well over a week now.
They have been saying that they are going to advance
their ground operation into Rafa.
And honey, when you speak about,
you know, the vast majority of people in in Rafa
and how they're feeling,
it's really important to remind our viewers at this point
that the vast majority of Gaza population
is now in Rafa is in its southernmost city on
the border with Egypt.
Yes, that is accurate. More than half of the Gaza
Strip population have been squeezed into this small part
of the city and you can easily spot how densely
populated
become. Has the Rafa city become just a brief walk
into
the streets of Rafahan and and seeing the all the
tents that have been set up on the sidewalk or
on the little island in the middle of the road
or evacuation centers manage and run by
honor law and All in all all the empty pockets
of land here at the the initial weeks of the
war.
When we arrived here we
did some of the reporting.
The city was relatively
empty, with the exception of course of the local
residents that just within a span of two months the
population went from
250,000 all the way to one point,
a little over 1.7 million people
here all crowded in. In this small part,
the city doesn't have enough space,
doesn't have a proper infrastructure,
doesn't have necessities and facilities to accommodate this large number
of people.
So far what we're looking at the pattern that's been
created on the on the ground is not only displacement
and the the fact that there are difficult living conditions
that they have to experience on daily basis and what
seems to be their new normal
and now it's on top of this is the mounting
the trauma of
the of the threat of the ground invasion.
But they are left with no options in terms of
safety.
It's the equivalent to none or very limited because
no talks about a a possibility of providing a safety
zone or safety corridor.
And even if there are talks about this,
there's still that terrible experience they had in the past
with with safety zones designated by the Israeli military.
And its people ended up being killed in the very
designated zones that the military told them to go to.
But now there there is a huge explosion going on
at the northern part of the city.
And I I can clearly hear it.
Honey, thank you very much for that.
That is our correspondent Honey Mahmoud joining us on the
phone from Rafa with the very latest.
Thank you, Honey.
And the Israeli army has been speaking about the military's
actions in Rafael.
Let's go to our correspondent Rory Challon.
So he's joining us live from occupied E Jerusalem.
And Rory, as we were hearing from Hanny,
that increase in Israeli military action is very much continuing.
This is after Israel has got those two captives out
of Gaza.
They have said that the wave of air raids that
they launched were to get the captives out.
Yeah, that's right. And that's what's being reported in the
Israeli media,
that the intense bombardment that
Rafa had overnight was directly linked.
It was part of this rescue operation.
Now we've heard from in a statement,
we've heard from the Defence Minister,
Joaf Galant, who has called this
an impressive rescue operation, he said.
I followed the operation closely with the Prime Minister and
officials and we express our appreciation to the army and
Shin Bet forces for the important operation.
This was a joint operation army,
Shin Bet. That's the Internal Security Agency,
Intelligence Security Agency and Israeli police as well.
Now, what's being reported in Israeli media,
We can't independently verify this at the moment.
The picture that we're getting is that the operation took
about an hour
and it happened at, say,
one in the morning local time overnight,
that the captives were being held
and had a heavily guarded
apartment building on the second floor of that building,
and that the operation had been planned for quite some
time and it had been delayed numerous times before it
was finally undertaken.
What are the takeaways from this?
Well, this is obviously a rare bit of good news
for the Netanyahu government.
It highlights the difficulty of
rescue operations to get those captors out.
This is only the second time that an operation of
this sort has been carried out successfully.
So Netanyahu is likely to use this as a further
indication,
further proof that
a proper ground operation in Rafa is necessary because these
captors were found in the Rafa area.
It also I think shows the level of destruction
and death that the Israeli army is willing to inflict
on civilians in Gaza.
We've had 60 plus dead
in Rafa to get 2 hostages,
2 captives out. So that's another illustration of of that
kind of
mismatch that that balance of of death and destruction for
for Israeli lives.
And also I think it plays into this idea of
of well,
where are these hostages being kept.
The assumption is that most of them have been kept
underground in in the tunnels.
But these two if we understand it correctly were found
above ground in in an apartment building.
So that might influence this kind of the rumours that
we're getting out of Israel at the moment are that
many more of the captives are assumed to be dead
than had initially been or officially been stated,
and that might these two might be linked.
It might well be because some of the captors are
being held above ground rather than underground,
which means, of course, they're subjected to the same level
of intense bombardment that the civilians
of Gaza are being subjected to.
Rory, thank you very much for that.
Rory challenge with the very latest Live in occupied E
Jerusalem.