Battle of Rafa 1917
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 9 January 1917 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1917 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | World War I era (1914–1918) | derived from year |
| Location | Palestine | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Asia | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | World War I | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Ottoman Empire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 31.2650, 34.2350 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Rafa, also known as the Action of Rafah, fought on 9 January 1917, was the third and final battle to complete the recapture of the Sinai Peninsula by British forces during the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the First World War. The Desert Column of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) attacked an entrenched Ottoman Army garrison at El Magruntein to the south of Rafah, close to the frontier between the Sultanate of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, to the north and east of Sheikh Zowaiid. The attack marked the beginning of fighting in the Ottoman territory of Palestine.
After the British Empire victories at the Battle of Romani in August 1916 and the Battle of Magdhaba in December, the Ottoman Army had been forced back to the southern edge of Palestine as the EEF pushed eastwards supported by extended lines of communication. This advance depended on the construction of a railway and a water pipeline. With the railway reaching El Arish on 4 January 1917, an attack on Rafa by the newly formed Desert Column became possible. During the day-long assault, the Ottoman garrison defended El Magruntein's series of fortified redoubts and trenches on rising ground surrounded by flat grassland.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Rafa (revision 1370587062), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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All 138 battles of the World War I →
Browse more: battles in Palestine · Asia · World War I era battles