“The streets are empty in Rafah as families continue to flee in search of safety… UNRWA It is estimated that nearly 450,000 people have been forcibly displaced from Rafah since May 6,” speak United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in a post from western Rafah on X.
“The interior of Rafah is now a ghost town. It’s hard to believe that just a week ago there were over a million people sheltering here,” reported UNRWA Spokesperson Louise Wateridge. “People often face exhaustion, hunger and fear. Nowhere is safe. An immediate ceasefire is the only hope.”
The North and South were bombed
The development comes as airstrikes continue to target northern and southern Gaza amid reports that the Israeli military said it had struck 120 targets in the past 24-hour period.
“Ground attacks and heavy fighting continue to be reported in eastern Rafah as well as Gaza City and the Jabaliya refugee camp.,” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Aid, OCHAsaid in its latest situation update late Monday.
Many of those forced to leave eastern Rafah have been displaced multiple times in the past seven months, the UN office explained.
In the north, evacuation orders were also issued on Saturday “amid Israeli bombing there,” OCHA said, noting that so far, about 100,000 people have left their homes and shelters. hidden.
“OCHA remains deeply concerned about the lack of protection for civilians and the lack of safety for humanitarian operations,” the UN agency said, noting that One-fifth of Gaza’s population was displaced in the last week alone.
“People must have their basic needs protected and met, whether they move or stay. Those who leave must have enough time as well as a route and a safe place to go.”
Deep concerns remain about the lack of life-saving aid reaching the area since Israeli troops seized the Rafah border crossing and restricted access to the nearby Kerem Shalom border crossing last week in response to the attack. by deadly rockets from Hamas militants.
“The Rafah flyover remains closed, and there continues to be a lack of safe and logistically feasible access to the Kerem Shalom flyover,” OCHA said late Monday.
Causing concern among Gaza residents, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the incursion into Rafah had jeopardized access to health care, the delivery of medical services and the delivery of life-saving supplies.
The UN health agency noted that partners work on medical relief in Gaza “requires a minimum of 46,000 liters of fuel per day just to operate.”
Death count data is protected
In a related development, United Nations agencies have rejected false claims that the number of dead and injured Gazans has dropped after the region’s Health Ministry announced that about 25,000 of the 35,000 reported deaths have now been identified.
“We’re basically talking about 35,000 people dead, and really that’s the problem, right? We know that many of them are women and children, and that there are thousands of people missing under the rubble,” said Liz Throssell, spokeswoman for the United Nations human rights office. OHCHRto answer questions from journalists in Geneva.
Echoing that message, WHO emphasized that the Ministry of Health’s death verification system will necessarily take time, because in Gaza, “the numbers are very large.”
WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said an estimated 18,000 individuals have yet to be identified or found, including 10,000 bodies that have been recovered and another 8,000 people yet to be found..
Of the 24,686 deaths identified, 40% were men (10,006), 20% were women (4,959) and 32% were children (7,797). In a separate category, the elderly accounted for 8% of all identified deaths (1,924), Mr. Lindmeier explained.
Of the 10,000 unidentified victims, WHO officials said there was a “high possibility” of finding the bodies of more women and children from destroyed houses, “because they were stay at home, while men go out looking for food. looking for business and supplies” for their families.
“Each (one) of these characters is a person with a name, a history, and a family,” he told journalists. “So while people were still under the rubble, dead in mass graves, somewhere on the side of the road [and] cannot be caught in a conflict zone in a so-called safe zone, but still inaccessible because there is gunfire, as long as all this is going on, there will still be people out there who cannot identified.”
Welcoming ongoing efforts to identify all those killed during more than seven months of war in Gaza as part of the civilian casualty monitoring process, OHCHR’s Ms. Throssell emphasized that “the The bottom line is we are talking about people who lost their lives.” .”
