Charred bodies and screams: Witnesses describe scenes of horror after an airstrike at a camp.

The World Court appeared to order Israel on Friday to suspend its military offensive and “any other action” in Rafah that might wholly or partly destroy the Palestinian population there. Some of the court’s judges said that Israel could still conduct some military operations in Rafah under the terms of their decision.

Israel said the strike on Sunday night killed two Hamas officials, but the civilian deaths generated instant condemnation, likely making it harder for Israel to defend its position that the court order allowed it to continue its campaign in Rafah.

Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech to the Israeli Parliament that Israel tried to minimize civilian deaths by asking Gazans to evacuate parts of Rafah, but “despite our supreme effort not to harm uninvolved civilians, a tragic accident occurred to our regret last night.” He accused Hamas of hiding among the general population, saying, “For us, every uninvolved civilian who is hurt is a tragedy. For Hamas, it’s a strategy. That’s the whole difference.”

Israeli military aerial footage of the attack, reviewed by The New York Times, showed a munition striking an area housing several structures and parked cars. The footage also appeared to show at least four people walking around just before the Israeli strike hits.

Multiple videos from the same location after the strike, verified by The Times, showed fires raging through the night as people frantically pulled bodies from the rubble, shouting in horror as they carried the charred remains out of the camp. In one video, a man held a headless child as fire engulfed a structure behind him.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted a Hamas compound. In a statement on Monday, it said it had taken a number of steps beforehand to reduce the risk to civilians, including conducting aerial surveillance and using precision munitions.

“Based on these measures, it was assessed that there would be no expected harm to uninvolved civilians,” the military said.

But at least 45 people were killed by the blast and subsequent fires, according to the Gaza health ministry, including 23 women, children and older people. The ministry said that 249 people were wounded.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said on Monday that an initial investigation by the military had concluded that the strike may have unexpectedly ignited a flammable substance at the site. Eyewitnesses described intense fires after the strike.

Military drone footage of the attack, reviewed by The New York Times, showed the munition striking an area housing several large, cabinlike structures and parked cars.

Two Israeli officials said that the strike took place outside the designated humanitarian zone that was supposed to offer safe refuge to residents told to evacuate, disputing a claim by the International Rescue Committee that it was within the safe zone. The military produced a map showing what it said was the location of the strike in relation to the designated humanitarian area.

The military named the targets of the strike as Yassin Rabia, the commander of Hamas’s leadership in the occupied West Bank, and Khaled Nagar, a senior official in the same wing of the group.

Hamas did not confirm their deaths, but in a statement it described the Israeli strike on Rafah as “a horrific war crime,” and demanded the “immediate and urgent implementation” of the World Court’s decision.

The strike occurred in Tal as Sultan, in northwest Rafah, according to the military. Israeli ground troops have so far been operating in southeast Rafah, and in a narrow corridor along the Egyptian border.

The order issued on Friday by the International Court of Justice, an arm of the United Nations, came as part of a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. It called on Israel to immediately halt any actions in Rafah, “which may inflict upon the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Israeli officials have argued that the ruling allowed Israel to continue fighting in Rafah because it had not, and would not, inflict such conditions.

But even some of Israel’s allies disagree. Germany’s vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, said on Saturday that Israel’s offensive in Rafah was “incompatible with international law.” And President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Monday that he was “outraged” by the airstrike in Rafah, and that these operations “must stop.”

Legal experts said the World Court’s ruling was worded ambiguously, most likely deliberately, in part out of the need to find common ground among the judges.

But William Schabas, a professor of international law at Middlesex University London and a former chairman of a U.N. commission of inquiry into Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip in 2014, said it was “preposterous” for Israel to take the order as “a kind of carte blanche to continue its military operations without change in Rafah.”

Individual opinions of some of the judges “suggest a lack of unanimity about the extent of any exceptions to the general prohibition on military activity in Rafah,” Professor Schabas said. But “stop means stop,” he said, calling Israel’s argument “a fanciful twisting of language.”

Yuval Shany, a professor of international law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said the Israeli position “does make sense” given the obvious ambiguity in the language and the conditional nature of the ruling. But, he noted, the court viewed the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as already catastrophic and deteriorating, and said that to comply with the ruling, Israel would have to do more to alleviate the risk to civilians and their suffering.

The deadly strike in Rafah “certainly complicates Israel’s position,” Professor Shany said — even if it was intended as the sort of focused, precise strike that Israel’s allies have urged it to switch to.

At times, such deadly accidents have generated enough international pressure on Israel to end rounds of conflict. During an Israeli operation against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 1996, Israeli forces shelled a U.N. compound in the village of Qana, killing more than a hundred civilians who had sought refuge there. That led to a U.N. Security Council call for an immediate cease-fire and a U.S.-brokered understanding that ended the hostilities about a week later.

In 2006, during another conflict with Hezbollah, a turning point came when Israeli forces shelled a multistory residential building in Qana, killing about 28 people.

Neil Collier, Patrick Kingsley, Arijeta Lajka, Myra Noveck , Johnatan Reiss and Christiaan Triebert contributed reporting.

The Israeli military said that it had aimed a strike at a Hamas compound and killed two Hamas leaders. A legal official with the military said Monday that the strike was under review.

Bilal al-Sapti, 30, a construction worker in Rafah, said he saw charred bodies in the wreckage of the camp in the Tal as Sultan area of Rafah, and people screaming as firefighters tried to put out the flames.

“The fire was very strong and was all over the camp,” he said. “There was darkness and no electricity.”

Mr. al-Sapti said that shrapnel from the strike tore up the tent where he was staying with his wife and two children, but that his family was uninjured.

“What kind of a tent will protect us from missiles and shrapnel?” he said.

UNRWA, the main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, described on social media a “horrifying” attack and said the images emerging from the site were “yet another testament” that Gaza is “hell on earth.”

Multiple videos from the same location, verified by The New York Times, show fires raging through the night as people frantically pull bodies from the rubble and shout in horror as they carry away charred remains.

By morning, several shed-like structures were flattened, and cars were burned out, the footage shows. The sheds are part of a displaced persons camp known as the Kuwaiti Al-Salam Camp 1.

The Times verified that the locations seen in various videos showing fires raging and burned bodies are from the same camp, by comparing them to previous videos of the site from aid groups. In a statement on Instagram, one of the groups that supports the camp, Al-Salam Association for Humanitarian and Charitable Works, said that, besides dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, over 120 tents and dozens of toilets were burned and damaged, and that a water well was destroyed.

Adli Abu Taha, 33, a freelance journalist who was at a nearby field hospital run by the United Arab Emirates Red Crescent, said the dead and wounded began arriving there shortly after he heard two loud explosions.

“Several injured arrived without one or more limbs and were severely burned,” Mr. Abu Taha said. “The hospital soon became overwhelmed,” he added.

When Mr. Abu Taha went to the tent camp on Monday morning, all he could see was “destruction” coupled with “the smell of smoke and burned flesh,” he said. He said that some families were dismantling their tents and preparing to find another place to seek shelter.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, who was at the Tal Al Sultan Health Center in Rafah where many of the casualties first arrived before being transferred to nearby field hospitals, said that of the killed and wounded he saw, a majority were women and children.

“Many of the dead bodies were severely burned, had amputated limbs and were torn to pieces,” he said.

Mohammed Abu Ghanem, 26, said that he and the 13 other people who had been sheltering in a tent with him in the camp were wondering where to go. “I hear that everywhere is being bombed and I have no cash to pay for the trucks that evacuate people,” he said, adding: “We have no other option but to remain here and wait for death.”

Iyad Abuheweila, Johnatan Reiss and Neil Collier contributed reporting.

However, Lebanese officials stressed that the man was a civilian, and the country’s health minister, Firass Abiad, told The New York Times that the man had been driving his mother to the hospital, in the town of Bint Jbeil, when his motorcycle was hit. It was not clear if the man’s mother was also killed. Mr. Abiad said that 15 civilians, including five health care workers, were wounded in the strike, at the entrance to the Salah Ghandour Hospital.

The health ministry said Israel’s strike violated the Geneva Conventions, as well as international laws that protect health workers in conflicts.

“This brutal bombing is a full-fledged war crime and a new episode in the series of repeated and flagrant violations committed by Israel against health care facilities and health care workers in Lebanon,” the ministry said in a statement.

The attack was the latest flare-up of violence along the volatile Lebanese-Israeli border, where the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel — already the heaviest between the sides in nearly two decades — has shown no sign of subsiding nearly eight months after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7.

Around 153,000 civilians on both sides of the border have fled. More than 300 Hezbollah fighters and over 80 civilians have been killed in Lebanon, along with 15 Israeli soldiers.

Hezbollah said later on Monday that it had responded by launching dozens of rockets at towns and cities in northern Israel.

Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah lawmaker in the Lebanese Parliament, said after visiting the hospital on Monday that such attacks by Israel would undermine its stated objective of returning the 60,000 or so civilians evacuated from areas along the border.

“These attacks are intended to put pressure on our country, the people of the region and the resistance,” he said, adding that the border violence would end only when Israel stopped its war against Hamas in Gaza.

“These operations must stop,” he said, referring to the strike on Sunday. “There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians.”

The strike came just two days after the International Court of Justice appeared to order Israel to immediately halt its offensive in the city. A legal official with the Israeli military said the strike was under review.

Volker Türk, the United Nations human rights chief, said, “What is shockingly clear is that by striking such an area, densely packed with civilians, this was an entirely predictable outcome.”

Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares said at a news conference Monday that he planned to ask other foreign ministers from the European Union’s member states to support the World Court’s rulings against Israel and to take measures if Israel continues with its Rafah operations.

António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, condemned Israel’s actions in a post on X.

“There is no safe place in Gaza,” Mr. Guterres wrote. “This horror must stop.” Tor Wennesland, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, condemned the airstrikes and said he was “deeply troubled by the deaths of so many women and children in an area where people have sought shelter.”

Germany’s public broadcaster reported that the country’s vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, said on Saturday that Israel’s offensive in Rafah was “incompatible with international law.” Senior German officials had previously warned Israel against attacking Rafah, but Mr. Habeck’s comments appeared to represent a hardening of that tone in a country with a longstanding policy of support for Israel.

“Israel must not carry out this attack, at least not in the way it did in the Gaza Strip before, bombing refugee camps and so on,” Mr. Habeck said.

The Israeli military said the strike was targeting a Hamas compound and that it used “precise munitions” to kill two senior Hamas leaders. But at least 45 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded in the strike and ensuing fires, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

In a statement, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, acknowledged that the assault had killed two senior leaders responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel and said that Israel “has a right to go after Hamas.”

“But as we’ve been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians,” said Eduardo Maia Silva, the spokesman for the council, before referring to the Israel Defense Forces, adding, “We are actively engaging the I.D.F. and partners on the ground to assess what happened, and understand that the I.D.F. is conducting an investigation.”

The assault drew criticism from aid groups, like the International Rescue Committee, which issued a statement saying it was “horrified” and calling the area that was hit a “designated safe zone.” Israeli officials insist that the strike was outside the area they had designated as a safe zone for civilians. The I.R.C. also called for an end to Israel’s assault, a full cease-fire and for the release of all hostages.

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator, denounced the Israeli strike on social media, and, appearing to reference the Israeli military’s activity in southern Gaza, lamented how aid agencies have struggled to pick up goods at the scale needed.

“Such impunity cannot continue,” Mr. Griffiths said.

Philippe Lazzarini, chief of UNRWA, the main U.N. aid agency for Palestinians, described the images coming out of Rafah as a “testament to how Rafah has turned into hell on earth.”

The agency has had difficulty contacting its teams on the ground in Rafah, he said, and some of his staff are unaccounted for.

“UNRWA is doing everything possible not to interrupt the delivery of humanitarian assistance. But with every day passing, providing assistance & protection becomes nearly impossible,” Mr. Lazzarini wrote on X.

Catherine Russell, the executive director of UNICEF, said the continued assaults in Rafah pose “a catastrophic risk to the children sheltering there,” adding that many have already suffered extreme loss and hardship.

“They must be protected, along with the few remaining basic services and infrastructure they need to survive,” Ms. Russell wrote.

The shooting reflected the escalating tension at the border since early May, when the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, became the focus of Israel’s military campaign to defeat Hamas, an armed group that led a deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Israeli troops took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing, the main conduit between the territory and Egypt, early this month.

The Israeli military also on Monday reported a shooting at the border, but did not give further details.

“Several hours ago, a shooting incident took place on the Egyptian border,” Israel’s military said in a statement. “The incident is under review. There is a dialogue with the Egyptian side.”

The Egyptian army’s spokesman, Col. Gharib Abdel Hafez, wrote on social media that a member of Egypt’s security forces was killed in the shooting near the crossing.

The Israeli seizure of the Rafah crossing, in what Israel called a limited operation into Rafah, halted the flow of aid into the enclave through that portal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said the operation is vital to defeat the remaining battalions of Hamas and to destroy its military infrastructure, including tunnels.

Rafah’s population had swollen to more than one million as Gazans displaced from their homes fled to the area earlier in the conflict. The Egyptian authorities said they were concerned about an exodus of refugees across the border and onto its soil. Since then, most people have fled Rafah to areas farther from the Egyptian border.

Israeli leaders have said repeatedly that they needed to control the crossing and a buffer zone along Gaza’s southern border, known in Israel as the Philadelphi Corridor, in order to block tunnels built by Hamas that run from Gaza into Egypt.

After U.S. pressure, Egypt announced on Friday that it had agreed to divert trucks through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, which is roughly two miles from the Rafah crossing, as a temporary measure.

Some 126 trucks from Egypt containing food, fuel and other necessities entered the Gaza Strip through Kerem Shalom on Sunday, the Israeli military said in a statement. The trucks were inspected by Israeli officials, said Ahmad Ezzat, an Egyptian Red Crescent official.

The quantity of food, water and medicines reaching Gazans has plummeted since the war began nearly eight months ago. As a result, the United Nations and aid groups have been warning of widespread hunger in the enclave and urging Israel to open more routes for aid to enter. But in recent weeks, aid shipments into Gaza through the two main land conduits have been interrupted.

One of those crossings is Kerem Shalom, which sits at the intersection of Gaza, Israel and Egypt. Israel temporarily closed Kerem Shalom a few weeks ago after a Hamas rocket attack there killed four of its soldiers. Since then Israel has allowed some aid into Gaza through Kerem Shalom, but its distribution has been a point of contention. Israel says that aid agencies must distribute the aid. But the agencies say that the Israeli military’s activity in southern Gaza has made their job nearly impossible.

The other major gateway for aid is between Gaza and Egypt, at Rafah. Israeli forces captured the crossing as part of their initial advance toward the city overnight on May 6. Since then, Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials have been unable to strike a deal to resume aid shipments there.

Israel has been under international pressure to find a way to reopen Rafah to prevent an even greater humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. On Friday, the World Court ordered Israel to “open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision” of aid. Israel pledged to do so, but said it would also “prevent terrorist organizations from controlling the crossing.”

When the Rafah crossing closed, the Egyptian government also initially held out on sending aid trucks toward Kerem Shalom, in what American and Israeli officials called an attempt to pressure Israel to back down from its operation in Rafah.

On Friday, Egypt and the United States announced that Cairo had agreed to temporarily allow food, basic supplies and fuel to move from its territory into Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Egyptian president, emphasized that the measure was a stopgap until “a new legal mechanism” could be found on the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing.

It remains unclear when the Rafah crossing will reopen for aid. U.S. officials are expected to head to Cairo this week to “support efforts to reopen the Rafah crossing,” according to the White House.