SUCRE, Tuesday, May 28, 2024 (WAFA) – Bolivian Minister of Foreign Affairs Celinda Sosa Lunda expressed her indignation at the Israeli massacre in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah.
Minister Lunda voiced her profound indignation at the Israeli attack on the tents of civilians in Rafah, which resulted in scores of fatalities and casualties.
She slammed the Israeli attack as a blatant violation of international law and international humanitarian law and called for the immediate cessation of the Israeli genocidal war on the Strip.
She also called for a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian question that would allow the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination, while affirming her country’s solidarity with the just Palestinian question.
On the evening of 26 May, Israeli warplanes fired rockets at the tents of displaced Palestinians sheltering in a UN-run "safe zone" in Rafah, leading to the burning to death of at least 40 refugees, most of them women and children, and wounding some 250 others.
The strikes were carried out in a UN-run "safe zone" in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood, where thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter after Israeli forces launched a ground offensive in eastern parts of the city earlier this month.
Videos posted on social media showed fires raging through makeshift tents while survivors tried in vain to extricate those caught in the flames. Eyewitnesses confirmed that they saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs, in addition to cases of amputations.
The air strikes came just two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel in a legally binding decision to halt its military offensive in Rafah, which may violate its obligations under the Genocide Convention.
The Sunday attack took place in an area that is part of the Israeli-designated "humanitarian zone", which it advised civilians to shelter in.
It was also in the vicinity of warehouses belonging to the UN refugee agency for the Palestinians, Unrwa.
Tried before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7, killing at least 36,096 Palestinians and injuring over 81,136 others.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Y.S./K.F.
