The Gaza Strip is on the brink of another humanitarian disaster, that of refugees. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans sought refuge in one of the largest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced on the ruins of the city of Rafah.
A day after declaring their intention to capture large areas of the densely populated enclave, Israeli forces entered the city on the southern edge of Gaza, which had served as the last refuge for people fleeing other areas for much of the war.
Gaza's health ministry reported at least 97 people killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, including at least 20 killed in an airstrike around dawn on the Shejaia suburb of Gaza City.
"Rafah is gone, it's hiding," a father of seven among hundreds of thousands who had fled Rafah to the neighboring area of Khan Younis told Reuters. After an attack that killed several people in Khan Younis, Adel Abu Fakher was inspecting the damage in his tent.
“We were sleeping when Israeli planes attacked the house next to us. The terrace fell on us, debris hit our children’s eyes, the neighbor’s roof caught fire. Now we only have two tents, one outside and one inside our living space. My husband was sleeping on the bed on the veranda but the doctors now say that one of his kidneys was damaged and as a result he died ,” said Inas Al-Aqqad, a Gaza resident.
Israel has not set out its long-term goals for the security zone its troops are now occupying. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the troops were taking an area he called the “Morag Axis,” a reference to a former abandoned Israeli settlement that once lay between Rafah on the southern edge of Gaza and the adjacent major southern town of Khan Younis.
Gazans who had returned to their ruined homes during the ceasefire have now been ordered to leave communities on the northern and southern edges of the strip. They fear that Israel's aim is to depopulate those areas indefinitely, leaving hundreds of thousands of people permanently homeless in one of the poorest and most densely populated territories on earth. (A2 Televizion)
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