Gaza war is escalating, no sign of any peace settlement: Russia
Russia said on Wednesday that the war in Gaza was escalating due to Israel’s incursion into Rafah and that Moscow so far saw no prospect for a peace settlement in Gaza or the wider Middle East.
Israel invaded Rafah, a southern Gazan city where more than one million displaced Palestinian civilians have sought shelter from Israel’s offensive throughout the tiny territory.
“An additional destabilizing factor, including for the entire region, was the launch of an Israeli military ground operation in Rafah,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“About one and a half million Palestinian civilians are concentrated there. In this regard, we demand strict compliance with the provisions of international humanitarian law.”
Speaking more broadly about efforts to find a lasting settlement in the Middle East, Zakharova said: “I would like to call it a settlement, but, alas, it is far from a settlement.”
“There are no prospects for resolving the situation in the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, the situation in the conflict zone is escalating daily.”
The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting about 250 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s offensive has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Meanwhile, Aid for Gaza was being loaded onto a ship in Cyprus on Wednesday in what was expected to be the first cargo to be delivered using a US pier built to expedite supplies to the besieged enclave.
Containers were being stacked on the US flagged Sagamore, docked at the port of Larnaca, on Wednesday.
Some containers to the ship were labeled as aid from the United Arab Emirates. Konstantinos Letymbiotis, a Cyprus government spokesperson, said a US jetty built to handle aid shipments to Gaza had been completed.
“We are completing the loading of aid onto a US vessel now in Larnaca and once the platform is in place this part of the process [shipment] can commence,” he said.
It was unclear when the vessel would depart. Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, has devastated the tiny Gaza Strip, where aid agencies warn its 2.3 million people are facing imminent famine.
Cyprus opened a sea corridor in March to ship aid directly to Gaza, where deliveries via land have been severely disrupted by border closures and Israel’s military operations.
US-based charity World Food Kitchen (WCK) used the route twice before seven of its workers were killed in
Israeli air strike on April 1.
Gaza lacks port infrastructure and the US has built a custom-made offshore jetty to take delivery of aid shipments.