Rafah.Palestinian civilians in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, looked desperate on Monday when Israel began dropping leaflets urging them to evacuate for their own “safety” before the start of a “limited” military operation.
The Israeli army assured that it asked to evacuate Palestinian families in eastern Rafah, before launching a ground assault on this city on the border with Egypt.
Residents of Rafah reported that when they took to the streets after a terrifying night in which a dozen airstrikes were carried out on the city, they found leaflets falling from the sky ordering them to “evacuate immediately.”
“The army is working intensively against the terrorist forces close to you,” read one of the pamphlets circulating in eastern Rafah.
“For your safety, (…) evacuate immediately to the expanded humanitarian zones of al Mawasi,” he announces, along with a map indicating the location in the north of Rafah.
Osama al Kahlut, of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza, told AFP that the areas designated for evacuation currently host some 250,000 people, many of whom have already been displaced from other areas in the Gaza Strip.
“The evacuation process has begun, but in a limited way,” he added.
After being asked how many individuals should be evacuated, an Israeli military spokesman said that “the estimate is about 100,000 people.”
The World Health Organization estimates that around 1.2 million people live in Rafah, most displaced during the seven-month war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
Israeli soldiers killed
In the rain, some of these refugees in Rafah said they began gathering their belongings from crowded stores and preparing to leave even before Israel’s evacuation order came.
“Whatever happens, my shop is ready,” one resident told Afp.
On the other hand, others say that the area to which they were told to flee was overcrowded, and they did not trust it to be safe.
Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar, 36, indicated that he and twelve members of his family were in the designated evacuation area, but “there is not enough space to put up our tent because it is full of displaced people,” he said.
“Where can we go? We don’t know,” he declared.
“Likewise, there are no hospitals and it is far from the services that many need,” he said, adding that a member of his family depended on dialysis at Al Najar hospital, in the Rafah area under evacuation order.
“How will we take care of her after this? Should we watch her die helplessly?” he declared.
An Israeli military spokesman told the press that the evacuation “is part of our plans to dismantle Hamas (…) Yesterday we had a violent reminder of its presence and operational abilities in Rafah.”
On Sunday, four Israeli soldiers were killed and others wounded, the army announced, in an attack on the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza, launched from an area adjacent to Rafah, it said.
“No credible humanitarian plan”
International aid organizations raised the alarm over the invasion of Rafah.
“From a humanitarian perspective, there is no credible humanitarian plan for an attack on Rafah,” said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s director in the Palestinian territories.
It asks where the displaced will go “when most of their surroundings have been reduced to death and rubble.”
The war between Hamas and Israel began on October 7, when Islamist commanders launched an assault in southern Israel in which 1,170 people died, mostly civilians, and about 250 were kidnapped, according to an AFP report based on Israeli data.
Israel estimates that 128 people remain captive in Gaza and that 35 have died so far.
The retaliatory offensive launched by Israel has already left 34,683 dead in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian territory governed by Hamas.
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– 2024-05-10 05:57:33
