The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Tuesday it estimates nearly 450,000 people have been forcibly displaced from the southern Gaza city of Rafah in the past week amid a push by Israeli forces into the area.
More than half of Gaza’s population had been sheltering in Rafah, with many of the Palestinians going there after fleeing the Israel-Hamas war in other parts of Gaza.
“People face constant exhaustion, hunger and fear. Nowhere is safe,” the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said. “An immediate cease-fire is the only hope.”
The United States, the United Nations and others have called on Israel to avoid a full-scale offensive in Rafah, warning of a humanitarian disaster there. But Israeli leaders say Rafah is the last stronghold for the Hamas militant group and an offensive is necessary to achieve the goal of eliminating Hamas as a threat in Gaza.
The International Committee of the Red Cross announced Tuesday the opening of a 60-bed field hospital in Rafah.
The ICRC said the facility will provide emergency surgeries, obstetric and gynecological care, pediatric care, and outpatient services for about 200 people per day.
“With health needs growing by the day in Gaza, the ICRC reiterates its call for the protection of medical facilities under international humanitarian law,” the ICRC said in a statement. “No patient should be killed while lying in a hospital bed. No doctors, nurses, or any medical professionals should ever die while working to save lives.”
Humanitarian aid is dwindling in Gaza as the two main crossings near Rafah remained closed Monday and aid workers struggled to distribute shrinking supplies and food to hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.
U.N. deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said during a news briefing Monday that the distribution of humanitarian aid in the enclave has come to a halt.
“There is still no traffic of humanitarian goods going through the Rafah crossing, which is closed,” he said. “And there is still a lack of safe and logistically viable access to the Kerem Shalom crossing. We are trying to get things, including through the Erez crossing, but the amount of stuff traveling has been very small in recent days.”
He added “at this stage we are rationing fuel… we are very low on fuel.”
Haq announced that a staff member with the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (DSS) was killed, and another injured in Gaza when their U.N. vehicle was struck Monday on the way to the European Hospital of Rafah.
“The secretary-general condemns all attacks on U.N. personnel and calls for a full investigation. He sends his condolences to the family of the fallen staff member,” he said.
At a checkpoint between the occupied West Bank and Israel Monday a group of Israeli protesters halted a convoy of aid bound for Gaza. Videos circulating online showed them hurling some of the aid off trucks and destroying it. Police said arrests were made, without elaborating.
Almost the entire population of Gaza relies on humanitarian aid to survive.
For the past week, the Israeli military has intensified bombardment and other operations in Rafah while ordering the population to evacuate from parts of the city. Israel insists this is a limited operation to destroy the militant infrastructure along Gaza’s border with Egypt.
US reaction
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a White House news briefing Monday that President Joe Biden’s administration did not view the killings of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel in its war with Hamas as a genocide.
“We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said the United States wants to see Hamas defeated, that Palestinians caught in the middle of the war were in “hell,” and that a major military operation by Israel in Rafah would be a mistake.
Biden, who is running for reelection this year, has faced heavy criticism from his own supporters domestically for his support of Israel; some of those critics have accused Israel of committing genocide.
The war was triggered by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and led to the capture of about 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Israel’s subsequent counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 35,100 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which includes civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and children.
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
