Israel’s military on Monday (06/05) asked residents of eastern Rafah to “evacuate immediately”, a day after the country’s defense minister told troops in Gaza to expect “intense action in Rafah in near future”.
In announcing the start of an operation to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli armed forces proceeded in a development that seems to signal the start of a ground operation against the city. The Israeli army clarified that it asked the Palestinians in the eastern part of Rafah to move to a nearby “humanitarian area” characterizing the operation as temporary and “limited in scale”.
“We have launched a limited-scale operation to temporarily evacuate people living in the eastern part of Rafah,” an Israeli army spokesman said during a press conference. “This is a limited-scale operation,” he repeated.
As the Israeli army explained, the evacuation from the eastern part of Rafah concerns “about 100,000 people”, while emphasizing that Palestinians are moving to humanitarian areas that are “safer”, although, he added, Hamas is known to fire from there.
Israel has repeatedly indicated it plans to send troops to Rafah, a city on the border with Egypt where more than a million displaced Palestinians are believed to have taken refuge since October 7.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallad told troops inside the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning (05/05) to expect “intense action in Rafah in the near future and elsewhere throughout the Strip” because – as he said – Hamas does not intend to reach an agreement on the hostages and the ceasefire.
Raid in Rafah after Hamas attack in Kerem Shalom
An Israeli airstrike killed nine Palestinians, including a baby, in another house in Rafah, Gaza health officials said. They said the new strike raised the death toll on Sunday (05/05) to at least 19 people.
Israel has vowed to enter southern Gaza City and drive Hamas forces out of it, but faces growing pressure not to open fire as the operation could derail fragile humanitarian efforts in Gaza and endanger many more lives. Sunday’s (05/05) attack on the crossing, according to Reuters, came as hopes for ceasefire talks underway in Cairo dwindled.
The war began after Hamas surprised Israel with a cross-border raid on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people and took 252 hostages, according to the Israelis. More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed, 29 of them in the last 24 hours, and more than 77,000 have been injured in the Israeli attack, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
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