“I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire.”

Israel has kept up attacks on Rafah despite a ruling by the top UN court on Friday ordering it to stop, arguing that the court’s ruling grants it some scope for military action there.

Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock and the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the ruling must be respected. “International humanitarian law applies for all, also for Israel’s conduct of the war,” Baerbock said.

In scenes grimly familiar from a war in its eighth month, Palestinian families rushed to hospitals to prepare their dead for burial after the strike late on Sunday night set tents and rickety shelters ablaze.

Women wept and men held prayers beside bodies in shrouds.

“The whole world is witnessing Rafah getting burnt up by Israel and no one is doing anything to stop it,” Bassam, a Rafah resident, said via a chat app, of the strike in an area of western Rafah that had been designated a safe zone.

Despite a global outcry at the toll on civilians, Israeli tanks continued to bombard eastern and central areas of the city on Monday, killing eight, local health officials said.

Israel’s military said Sunday’s air attack, based on “precise intelligence”, had eliminated militant group Hamas’ chief of staff for the second and larger Palestinian territory, the West Bank, plus another official behind attacks on Israelis.

Earlier on Sunday, it had said eight rockets were intercepted after being fired from the Rafah area. A minister said that showed the need for continued operations against Hamas.

Initial Israeli findings of the investigation are that an air strike against Hamas commanders set off a fire which killed Palestinian civilians, government spokesperson Avi Hyman said on Monday.

“The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) regrets any harm to non-combatants during the war,” Major-General Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi said at a conference on Monday.

The attack took place in the Tel Al-Sultan neighbourhood, where thousands were sheltering after Israeli forces began a ground offensive in the east of Rafah more than two weeks ago.

Many of the dead were women and children, the health officials said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise as some were in critical condition with severe burns.

“On top of the hunger, on top of the starvation, the refusal to allow aid in sufficient volumes, what we witnessed last night is barbaric,” Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said.

Egypt condemned the Israeli military’s “deliberate bombing of the tents of displaced people”, state media reported, describing it as a blatant violation of international law.

Saudi Arabia also condemned the Israeli attack, and Qatar said the Rafah strike could hinder efforts to mediate a ceasefire and hostage exchange.

No safe zone

By daylight, the camp was a smoking wreckage of tents, twisted metal and charred belongings.

Sitting beside the bodies of his relatives, Abed Mohammed Al-Attar said Israel lied when it told residents they would be safe in Rafah’s western areas. His brother, sister-in-law and several other relatives were killed in the blaze.

“The army is a liar. There is no security in Gaza. There is no security, not for a child, an elderly man, or a woman. Here he [my brother] is with his wife, they were martyred,” he said.

“What have they done to deserve this? Their children have been orphaned.”

Hospitals in Rafah, including the International Committee of the Red Cross field hospital, were unable to handle all the wounded, so some were moved to hospitals in Khan Younis further north in Gaza for treatment, doctors said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said the situation was horrifying. “Gaza is hell on earth. Images from last night are yet another testament to that,” UNRWA wrote on X.

More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s health ministry says. Israel launched the operation after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse