According to the Israeli military prosecutor, a “very heavy” air strike is responsible for the deaths of dozens of Palestinian civilians.

Israel’s top military prosecutor has described as “very serious” an airstrike on Rafah that Gaza health authorities said killed dozens of Palestinian civilians.

The prosecutor said the Israeli military was currently conducting a follow-up investigation into the incidents.

“The details of the incident are still subject to an investigation, which we will conduct in full,” Major General Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi said at a conference of the Israel Bar Association.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) regrets any harm inflicted on non-combatants during the war.”

Israel: Air Force attacks Hamas complex

At least 35 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured in the air strikes in an area designated for displaced persons in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian Health and Civil Emergency Services officials said.

The Israeli military said its air force had attacked a Hamas base in Rafah, saying the attack was carried out with “precise munitions and based on precise intelligence.”

Hamas’s chief of staff for the West Bank and another high-ranking official responsible for deadly attacks on Israelis were eliminated, it said.

Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesman for the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, said the attack killed 35 people and wounded dozens more, most of them women and children.

The attack took place in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood in western Rafah, where thousands of people sought shelter after many fled the eastern areas of the city, where Israeli forces launched a ground offensive more than two weeks ago.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said its field hospital in Rafah was receiving an influx of wounded and that other hospitals were also receiving large numbers of patients.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri described the attack in Rafah as a “massacre” and blamed the US for supporting Israel with weapons and money.

“The airstrikes have burned down the tents, the tents are melting and people’s bodies are melting too,” said one of the residents who arrived at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah.

Reuters/ABC