360,000 Palestinians leave Rafah
Israeli bombardments and other evacuation orders have created more displacement, says UNRWA
Gaza, Palestine - The number of Palestinians who were forced to leave Rafah due to attacks by Israeli forces rose to 360,000, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Monday.
“Nearly 360,000 people have fled #Rafah since the first evacuation order a week ago,” UNRWA stated on X.
“Meanwhile, in north #Gaza bombardments & other evacuation orders have created more displacement & fear for thousands of families,” it added.
The agency further underlined: “There’s nowhere to go. There’s NO safety without a #ceasefire.”
Israel has waged an unrelenting offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas last October 7 which killed some 1,200 people.
More than 35,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and 78,400 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Over seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85 per cent of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January said it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and ordered Tel Aviv to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
‘Protect civilian lives’
Meanwhile, Germany on Monday urged the protection of civilian lives in Rafah, the southern Gazan city that is home to over 1.4mn refugees and where a ‘precise’ Israeli military operation is underway.
We think it’s ‘incredibly difficult’ to conduct a large-scale ground offensive in a densely populated city like Rafah. That’s why we always appeal that ‘the protection of the civilian population plays a very important role in such military action’, deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Christian Wagner told journalists in Berlin. He reiterated the need for accelerated diplomatic efforts to resolve the Gaza war that began on October 7, 2023.
“Ultimately, we are all united by the goal that we must come back to a political process that ultimately shows a solution to this conflict. In the long term, the two-state solution is the only solution to sustainably resolve the Middle East conflict,” Wagner said.
Earlier on Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry said at least 500 medical personnel have been killed since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, as the world marked International Nurses Day. “Here in Palestine and in Gaza in particular, this day passes as the Israeli occupation has killed 138 nurses. This year’s International Nurses Day is exceptional, and it is our right to name this year the Year of Nursing,” ministry spokesperson Khalil al-daqran said during a news conference on the sidelines of a sit-in organised by nurses at Al-aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir al-balah in the central Gaza Strip.
“Nurses, midwives and medical teams are an integral part of the fabric of the Palestinian people. They were the martyrs who played their national and humanitarian role to save the lives of the wounded and the sick,” said al-daqran.
“They fulfilled their professional oath in a year where records were broken in terms of the amount of treatment provided under circumstances where the medical personnel were martyred, injured, displaced in tents or detained in Israeli racist prisons, with the number of medical personnel reaching 500 martyrs, 1,500 wounded and 312 detainees,” he added. Al-daqran called on the ‘international community and free people of the world to protect medical personnel and health institutions and to criminalise attacks against them’.
He also urged unions, international organisations and the World Health Organization (WHO) to send medical and nursing teams to support health teams in Gaza.
Protection of civilian population plays a very important role in such military action. Two-state solution is the only solution to sustainably resolve the Middle East conflict
CHRISTIAN WAGNER