More than 100,000 people have fled Rafah: UN
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More than 100,000 people have fled Rafah, the United Nations said Friday, with the southern Gaza city under threat of a full-scale Israeli ground invasion.
"More than 100,000 people have fled Rafah," said Hamish Young, UNICEF's senior emergency coordinator in the Gaza Strip, told a briefing in Geneva via video-link from Rafah.
Humanitarian officials are tracking the number of people fleeing Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where more than 1 million people displaced from elsewhere in the territory have been sheltering.
The numbers are expected to rise, with deep concern among aid officials on Thursday that the newly displaced people will end up in makeshift encampments without any services, living in the rubble of their former homes without “basic essentials necessary for life”.
One UN official in Rafah said: “There is a lot of fear and trepidation. The roads are very congested with cars, donkey carts, trolleys, pickup trucks and people walking. Some have already been displaced multiple times and are trying to take material for shelter with them, which isn’t easy; others are moving for the first time.
“We could be talking about 300,000 within a few days. The problem is there is basically nowhere that kind of number of people can go which is safe and equipped to provide basic essentials necessary for life.”
The attempts to evacuate came as a senior Israeli official told Reuters that the latest round of indirect negotiations in Cairo to halt hostilities had ended and Israel would proceed with its operation in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip as planned.
With no aid stockpiles after seven months of war, and supplies into southern parts of Gaza cut off after Israel’s seizure of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing on Tuesday, there was “not a lot” agencies could do to help, a second official said.
There were reports of dozens of airstrikes and repeated bombardment by tanks on Thursday, with several rocket launches by Hamas at Israel or Israeli troops.