Israel again bombs Rafah as UN Security Council to discuss camp blaze

Israel again bombarded Gaza's far-southern Rafah area on Tuesday despite a global storm of outrage over a strike that set ablaze a crowded tent city, killing 45 people according to Palestinian officials.

The strike, which Gaza medics said also left hundreds of civilians with shrapnel and burn wounds, drew condemnation from world leaders and was set to be discussed at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council from 1915 GMT.

The sight of the charred carnage, blackened corpses and children being rushed to hospitals led UN chief Antonio Guterres to declare that "there is no safe place in Gaza. This horror must stop."

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike a "tragic accident" but also vowed to push on with the military campaign to destroy Hamas over the 7 October attack and bring home all the hostages.

More air strikes and shelling rained down overnight on besieged Gaza -- including Rafah's Tal Al-Sultan area where the displacement camp went up in flames near a facility of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

"The situation is very dangerous," said one resident, Faten Jouda, 30. "We didn't sleep all night. There was random bombing from all directions, including artillery shelling and air bombardment as well as firing from aircraft.

"We saw everyone fleeing again," she told AFP. "We too will go now and head to Al-Mawasi because we fear for our lives," she said, referring to a nearby coastal area Israel has declared a safe "humanitarian zone".

Palestinian statehood

More than seven months into the bloodiest ever Gaza war, Israel has faced ever louder international opposition, as well as cases against the country and its leader before two international courts based in the Netherlands.

In a landmark political move on Tuesday, Spain as well as Ireland and Norway were to formally recognise Palestinian statehood, a step so far taken by over 140 UN members but few Western governments.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on national television that "recognition of the state of Palestine is not only a matter of historic justice... it is also an essential requirement if we are all to achieve peace".

"It is the only way to move towards the solution that we all recognise as the only possible way to achieve a peaceful future: that of a Palestinian state living side-by-side with the state of Israel in peace and security."

Israel has slammed the announced move as a "reward" for the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza, and earlier recalled its diplomatic envoys from Madrid, Dublin and Oslo.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz went further on Tuesday and launched an attack on Sanchez on social media platform X, telling him that "you are a partner to incitement to genocide of the Jewish people".

He also drew a parallel between Spanish minister Yolanda Diaz on the one hand and Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar on the other, following her call for a free Palestine "from the river to the sea".