Hamas warned on Saturday that an Israeli offensive on Rafah could cause “tens of thousands of deaths and injuries” in this town in southern Gaza, the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians that the Israeli prime minister announced want to evacuate.
New Israeli strikes targeted Rafah on Saturday, where more than 1.3 million Palestinians now live, according to the UN, the vast majority of them civilians having fled the war that has been raging for four months between Israel and Hamas.
After ordering the army on Wednesday to prepare an offensive on Rafah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked it on Friday to submit a “combined plan” for the “evacuation” of civilians and the “destruction” of the Palestinian Islamist movement in this area. city.
“We warn of a catastrophe and a massacre that could result in tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded,” Hamas said on Saturday.
The Hamas Health Ministry on Saturday counted 117 deaths in 24 hours across the Gaza Strip.
Fighting is taking place in particular in the grounds of the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, the largest in southern Gaza, now besieged by Israeli tanks, where there are still 300 staff members, 450 wounded and 10,000 displaced. according to the ministry.
Witnesses reported continuous tank fire overnight and Saturday at the compound, as well as fire from sniper soldiers and drones.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza in southern Israel, which left more than 1,160 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count. made from official Israeli data.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas, in power in the Palestinian territory since 2007, which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union. The Israeli army launched an offensive which left 28,064 dead in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the Islamist movement’s Ministry of Health.
About 1.7 million people, according to the UN, out of a total of 2.4 million inhabitants, have fled their homes, many of them displaced several times across the devastated territory, besieged by Israel and plunged into a major humanitarian crisis.
In Gaza City, in the north, a six-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, who had been missing for almost two weeks amid the fighting, was found dead on Saturday in a car in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. his family announced to AFP.
The family told AFP that the girl and other relatives were in a car when they came face to face with tanks which apparently opened fire. Hind had initially survived, as evidenced by a telephone call made to his family, while the other passengers had died.
A gigantic camp
After Gaza City then Khan Younes, Israel is now aiming for a ground operation in Rafah.
This town backed by the closed border with Egypt is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have fled bombings and fighting from the north of the small territory as they moved south. They are now massed, threatened in the middle of winter by famine and epidemics, in the city transformed into a gigantic encampment.
“It is impossible to achieve the objective of the war without eliminating Hamas and leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” and this requires that “civilians evacuate the combat zones,” Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday.
“The safe places are just lies,” testified Fadel Ghanem, whose house in Rafah was destroyed by a strike that killed his son and grandchildren. “There was no prior warning,” he told AFP. “They were all civilians. Children and their father. The oldest was eleven years old.
“Forcing more than a million Palestinians displaced in Rafah to evacuate again without finding a safe place to go would be illegal and have catastrophic consequences,” warned Nadia Hardman, migrant and refugee rights expert for Human Rights Watch.
“Excessive” response
The UN and even the United States, Israel’s main ally, are concerned about the fate of civilians. President Joe Biden deemed the “response in the Gaza Strip” to the October 7 attack “excessive” on Thursday.
On Saturday, Saudi Arabia warned of the “extremely dangerous repercussions” of an offensive on Rafah, adding that the UN Security Council must meet urgently “to prevent Israel from causing a humanitarian catastrophe imminent”.
Germany warned of a “foretold humanitarian catastrophe”, while Jordan said it rejected the “displacement of Palestinians inside or outside their lands”.
New talks between representatives of Qatar and Egypt, two of the mediating countries alongside the United States, and Hamas to try to reach a truce agreement including an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and hostages, took place late Friday in Cairo.
A Hamas official told AFP that the movement was “waiting for a response from Israel.”
Around 250 people were kidnapped in Israel on October 7 and taken to Gaza. A week-long truce in November allowed the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
According to Israel, 132 hostages are still being held in Gaza, of whom 29 are believed to have died.
According to the Axios website, CIA Director William Burns is due to travel to Egypt next week to continue efforts for a truce.