Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on designated 'safe zones’: An NBC News investigation
NBC News investigates 7 deadly airstrikes, reveals Palestinians killed in Israeli-designated Gaza 'safe zones'
TEL AVIV — An NBC News investigation into seven deadly airstrikes has found Palestinians were killed in areas of southern Gaza that the Israeli military had explicitly designated as safe zones.
The attacks took place from January to April, as Israel’s military bombarded Rafah from the air and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government signaled its intent to launch a full-scale ground invasion on Gaza’s southernmost city, which has now swelled to more than 1 million people.
NBC News camera crews filmed the bloody aftermath of the six strikes on Rafah itself and one strike farther north on the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone, which was also designated safe by Israel.
The crews compiled the GPS coordinates of each strike, all of which hit an area identified by the Israeli military as an evacuation zone in an online interactive map it published on Dec. 1. The map has not been updated since then and the Israel Defense Forces told NBC News in a statement Sunday that it remained accurate.
International aid agencies and Gazans have called the map confusing and difficult to read. Regular cellular and internet blackouts since the start of the war would also have made it difficult for civilians to access it.
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