Tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced in Gaza have been forced to flee south again after Israel intensified its attacks in the center of the besieged enclave, killing more than 180 people in the past 24 hours.
The Israeli military said in a post on ‘Israel.
Israeli bombings near El Amal hospital in Khan Younis have killed 41 people over the past two days, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Thursday, adding that among the victims of repeated Israeli attacks near the The establishment includes “displaced persons seeking refuge”.
The UN humanitarian office said around 100,000 additional displaced people had arrived in the already densely populated southern border town of Rafah in recent days following intensified fighting around Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza, and Khan Younis, to the south.
Earlier this week, Israeli forces ordered Palestinians to leave the densely populated central neighborhoods of Bureij, Maghazi and Nuseirat, as tanks advanced from the north and east.
Attacks on these areas have intensified in recent days, with many residents fleeing to already overcrowded Deir el-Balah, pitching makeshift tents made from plastic sheets on whatever open ground they could find.
“We suffered a lot. We spent the whole night without shelter, in the rain and it was cold, we were with our children and elderly women,” said Um Hamdi, a woman cooking porridge over an open wood fire, surrounded by children. , to the Reuters news agency.
Nearby, gray-bearded Abdel Nasser Awadallah stood inside a wooden frame intended to be wrapped in plastic to make a tent, and spoke of the family he had lost.
“I buried my children, a 16-year-old child, another 18-year-old. Something I really can’t believe, I buried my children at 6 a.m. while their bodies were still warm. My nephew was also two years old, I buried him, I buried my wife,” he said.
“Death or displacement”
Addressing the UN Security Council on Friday, Palestinian UN envoy Majed Bamya said the large-scale destruction of Gaza by Israeli operations made it clear that their only goal was forced displacement .
“They want to make sure that Palestinians in Gaza don’t have a home to return to,” he said. “They want to make sure they don’t have any lives left to give them back.” »
“They want to ensure that life in Gaza is no longer possible, with one goal, what they call ‘voluntary migration’… the code name for forced displacement. These are the options available to the Palestinians: destruction or displacement, death or displacement,” he said.
On Christmas Eve, the Maghazi refugee camp was the scene of one of the deadliest attacks since the launch of the Israeli military offensive on October 7. While the official number of people killed stands at 90, residents of the camp near Deir el-Balah told Tel Aviv Tribune that in reality the figure is much higher, as entire residential neighborhoods have been destroyed.
Israel offered a rare apology on Thursday for the deaths of civilians in the massive air raid that triggered one of the largest exoduses of the war so far, saying the munitions used were not suitable for a refugee camp crowded and that the high number of deaths “could have been avoided”.
Rafah hit before negotiations with Egypt
The UN says more than 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced and many are now fleeing for the third or fourth time.
Many now live in cramped shelters across 365 square kilometers of land or in makeshift tents around the southern town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt – which has also not been safe from Israeli attacks.
Rafah was hit by new air raids on Friday as Egypt prepared to host a high-level Hamas delegation for negotiations aimed at ending the nearly 12-week war that has devastated the besieged Palestinian territory.
Reuters journalists at the scene of an airstrike that destroyed a building in Rafah saw the head of a buried child emerging from the rubble.
The child screamed as one rescuer shielded his head with one hand, while another swung a sledgehammer on a chisel, trying to break a concrete slab to free him.
Neighbor Sanad Abu Tabet said the two-story house was filled with displaced people. At daybreak, relatives came to collect the dead wrapped in white shrouds.
Israel’s relentless aerial bombardments and ground invasion of Gaza have killed at least 21,507 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Egypt has played a leading role in promoting a ceasefire, including introducing a plan to end the fighting. This includes exchanges of captives and prisoners between Israel and Hamas.
The head of Egypt’s state information services, Dia Rashwan, said the plan was “intended to bring together the views of all parties concerned, with the aim of ending the shedding of Palestinian blood” .
A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, said Thursday that the group would not release more Israeli prisoners without “a complete and complete cessation of aggressive activities against our people through negotiations aligned with the interests of our people.”
#Gaza – Israeli soldiers fired on a humanitarian convoy as it returned from northern Gaza via an Israeli army-designated route – our international convoy leader and his team were not injured but one vehicle was damaged – aid workers should never be a target.@UNRWA
-Thomas White (@TomWhiteGaza) December 29, 2023
UN convoy under fire
The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza (UNRWA), Thomas White, said on Friday that a UN humanitarian convoy came under fire from the Israeli army on Thursday. Although there were no casualties, White condemned the attack on aid workers.
“Essentially we are delivering aid under fire,” White told Tel Aviv Tribune, explaining that the incident occurred as a convoy was returning from northern Gaza along a designated route. Israeli army.
“They went down this road, they encountered tanks, and those tanks used heavy machine guns to fire on the vehicles,” White said, adding that although one of the vehicles was damaged, personnel from the UNRWA was not injured.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, on Friday criticized Israeli forces who fired on the humanitarian convoy. In an article on
A “total siege” imposed by Israel since the war began on October 7, and after years of a crippling blockade, has deprived Palestinians in Gaza of food, water, fuel and medicine.
Severe shortages have only been alleviated sporadically by humanitarian aid convoys entering mainly via Egypt.
International agencies say supplies falling under Israeli inspections represent only a small fraction of the enclave’s vast needs. Last week, Israel bowed to international pressure to open a second crossing that the United Nations said would double the number of daily supply trucks to 200, but only 76 were able to enter on Thursday, according to the United Nations, down from 500 before the war.
Last week, a UN-backed report warned that all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents face dire levels of famine, with 576,600 people at catastrophic levels – or starvation.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths described on social media what he called “an impossible situation for the people of Gaza and those trying to help them.”
“Do you think it’s easy to get aid to Gaza? Think again,” he wrote on X on Friday.