OIC urges UN Security Council to ‘assume responsibilities’ after Rafah massacre

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has denounced the Israeli military’s recent airstrike on tents housing displaced people in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip as a “heinous massacre,” calling on the UN Security Council to assume its responsibilities to force the regime into stopping its acts of aggression. 

The 57-member OIC said in a statement on Tuesday that those responsible for the war crime attack on the camp in Rafah must be held to account and face international criminal law.

“The Secretary-General held the Israeli occupation accountable for the consequences of its crimes, terrorist practices, and brutal attacks against the Palestinian people, which are inconsistent with all human values,” the intergovernmental body noted.

“The OIC renewed its call on the international community, especially the UN Security Council, to assume its responsibilities in compelling Israel, to implement the orders of the International Court of Justice to stop this Israeli aggression immediately,” it added.

Rafah, situated on Gaza's southern border with Egypt, is home to about a million displaced Palestinians who have fled from the rest of the besieged territory amid a genocidal Israeli war.

The Rafah carnage came two days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to “immediately” halt its military offensive in the area.

Meanwhile, the United Nations humanitarian chief has hit out at Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for claiming that the recent deadly aerial assault in Rafah was a “mistake,” saying the carnage was possibly the “most cruel abomination.”

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths made the remarks on Monday, one day after the Israeli strike hit a camp for displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza city and killed at least 50 people and wounded 200 others.

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• Explainer: How Palestinian resistance, intl. bodies reacted to Rafah massacre?

Terrifying scenes of tents in flames and burned victims, many of whom were women and children, sparked an international outcry. 

However, Netanyahu called the air raid a "tragic mistake" and claimed that Israel was investigating the incident.

“Whether the attack was a war crime or a “tragic mistake,” for the people of Gaza, there is no debate. What happened last night was the latest – and possibly most cruel – abomination," Griffiths said in a statement.

“To call it ‘a mistake’ is a message that means nothing for those killed, those grieving, and those trying to save lives,” he added. 

The UN relief chief also pointed to the widespread warnings of a slaughter ahead of Israel's incursion into Rafah, saying, “We've seen the consequences in last night's utterly unacceptable attack.”

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.

Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.

So far during the military onslaught, the regime has killed at least 36,050 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents. Another 81,026 Palestinians have sustained injuries as well.

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