US President Joe Biden has said civilians who are “packed” into Rafah in the Gaza Strip are “exposed and vulnerable” and must be protected.
Israel must make “credible” efforts to protect the more than one million Palestinians sheltering in the southern Gazan city, he said.
Rafah has come under heavy Israeli air strikes in recent days, with a number of casualties reported.
A Palestinian doctor told the BBC people in Rafah were living in fear.
Last week, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he had ordered troops to prepare to expand its ground operation to Rafah. He vowed to defeat Hamas gunmen hiding in the city.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk said any assault would be “terrifying” and many civilians “will likely be killed”.
More than half of the Gaza Strip’s population of 2.3 million is now crammed into the city on the border with Egypt, which was home to only 250,000 people before the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October.
Many of the displaced people are living in makeshift shelters or tents in squalid conditions, with scarce access to safe drinking water or food.
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Israel’s military launched its operations in the Gaza Strip after at least 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel on 7 October by Hamas-led gunmen, who also took 253 people hostage.
A number of those hostages were later released but Israel says 134 are still unaccounted for.
Some 28,473 Palestinians have been killed and more than 68,000 wounded in Gaza since 7 October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there.https://kebayangkali.com/
On Sunday, Israel’s military said two male Israeli-Argentine hostages had been rescued during a raid in Rafah.