Israel launches artillery attack on Rafah – 2024-02-15 15:19:45

The Gazan city of Rafahat the southern end of the Stripe and where the majority of the almost two million people displaced by the war are located, received artillery fire from the Israeli Army this Tuesday, for the first time since Israel announced on Friday a ground incursion into the area.

The artillery fire against Rafah began in the morning and comes from Israeli tanks stationed in Israeli territory close to the border with the Strip, near the crossing of Kerem ShalomGazan sources informed EFE.

In addition to this offensive, shelling has also increased significantly in that border area with Egypt since Friday, when the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahuannounced an imminent ground incursion like the one that has already occurred in the north, center and other southern parts of the Palestinian enclave, where Israeli troops have clashed hand-to-hand with militants from the Islamist group Hamas.

According to Netanyahu, “It is impossible to achieve the war objective of eliminating Hamas and leaving four battalions in Rafah”so he ordered his troops to present a plan to evacuate the area and deepen the offensive, despite the fact that 1.4 million Palestinians – five times the usual population of Rafah – survive in overcrowded areas.

In four months of war, the Israeli offensive on the devastated Gaza Strip has left 28,473 dead and 68,146 injured, most of them children and women, while the survivors, including nearly two million displaced people (almost the entire population), They face the collapse of hospitals, the outbreak of epidemics and the persistent shortage of drinking water, food – with levels that border on famine – as well as medicine and electricity.

Many of the Palestinians in Rafah, families with children, the elderly and the sick, live in tents in the open and have been displaced several times since the war broke out on October 7.

Exposing them to a new displacement would not only be dangerous but not very viable for survival, taking into account that Israel has devastated extensive areas of the center and north of the enclave, which have been cut off due to the destruction of the roads, which would worsen access to the already scarce humanitarian aid.

“Civilians have nowhere to go to escape the bombing and face the real and imminent risk of genocide”the organization denounced International Amnestybased in London.

For its part, the American organization Refugees International said that a ground offensive in Rafah “would have catastrophic results for the civilian population,” so “the United States must use all the influence at its disposal to avoid a humanitarian cataclysm.”

The foreign ministry of the Palestinian National Authority, which governs small parts of West Bank occupied, called this Tuesday for “international consensus on the need to protect those displaced in Rafah,” while holding “the Israeli government and its army fully and directly responsible for the lives of civilians.”

The war broke out on October 7 after a Hamas attack that left about 1,200 dead and about 250 kidnapped in Israel. EFE (I)