Israeli strikes in Rafah leaves 31 Palestinians dead ahead of planned ground invasion

At least 31 Palestinians, including 10 children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip early Saturday as President Benjamin Netanyahu gears up for a ground invasion there to take out several Hamas battalions.

Three airstrike strikes killed 28 people, including multiple members of three families, with the youngest victim being three months old, according to a health official and The Associated Press journalists who saw the bodies arriving at hospitals.

Later on Saturday, another strike killed three senior officers in the civil police, according to Rafah city officials.

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Israel says that Rafah, which borders Egypt at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, is the last remaining Hamas stronghold in Gaza after more than four months of war. Israel has carried out airstrikes in Rafah almost daily.

Rafah’s population stood at 264,000 in early 2022, but since the onset of the conflict, the population has ballooned to around 1.4 million as people seek shelter there, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. More than half of Gaza's population is now packed into the city with some of the recent arrivals living in tents. It is unclear where they would be able to flee to next.

Netanyahu's office has ordered the military to develop a plan to evacuate the population of Rafah and destroy four Hamas battalions it says are deployed there. Netanyahu said he asked the military to plan for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from the city ahead of a ground invasion.

Earlier this week, Netanyahu vowed that Israeli forces would fight on until "total victory," including in Rafah, after cease-fire talks