Connell, who has been working in Gaza for several weeks, spoke of what she said was a “human chessboard” within which thousands of people were fleeing, who had already been displaced several times, and added that there was no guarantee that their next destination would be safe.
The United States, Israel’s strongest ally in its war against Hamas, has been pressing the Israeli government for weeks to take further steps to reduce harm to civilians by identifying safe areas and opening humanitarian routes for people to flee.
“People were heading south with mattresses and all their belongings in pick-up trucks and cars trying to find a safe place,” added Connell, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs team, who visited the Deir al-Balah neighborhood in the central Gaza Strip on Monday.
She continued, saying: “I spoke to many people. There is such little space left here in Rafah that people do not know where they are going, and it is as if people are being moved around a human chessboard because there is an evacuation order somewhere. People are fleeing from that area to “Another area. But they are not safe there.”
In response to a request for comment from Reuters, an Israeli army spokesman said that the army sought to evacuate civilians from combat areas, but Hamas is systematically trying to prevent these efforts, adding that the Palestinian movement uses civilians as human shields, which the movement denies.
There is no safe place in Gaza
In her interview, Connell mentioned the death of a nine-year-old boy named Ahmed at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where many of those wounded in the Israeli air strikes were taken last night. “He was not in an area where evacuation orders had been issued,” she said. “He was in an area where there were “It’s supposed to be safe. There is no safe place in Gaza,” she said, adding that new air strikes occurred while she was in the hospital and that she personally witnessed new wounded being brought in.
A text showed a notice from the Israeli army urging residents of at least six neighborhoods in central Gaza to evacuate on Friday.
The text says that the Israeli army will soon begin operations in their area and urges them to evacuate “temporarily and move to shelters” in Deir al-Balah.
An Israeli army spokesman told Reuters, “The IDF will act against Hamas wherever it is active, in full compliance with international law, distinguishing between terrorists and civilians, and taking all possible precautions to minimize harm to civilians.”
Christmas Eve proved to be one of the bloodiest nights in the 11-week war between Israel and Hamas, and Palestinian health officials in Gaza said that Israeli air strikes in the central and southern Strip killed more than 100 Palestinians, bringing the war death toll to nearly 20,700.
While the Palestinians mourn their dead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to continue the fight against Hamas fighters who launched a surprise cross-border attack on October 7, during which they killed 1,200 people and detained 240 others, according to what Israel says.
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2023-12-26 01:24:19
