Aid to Gaza choked off after Israeli forces seize Gaza's Rafah border crossing
Israeli
forces seized the main border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza on
Tuesday, shutting down a vital aid route into the Palestinian enclave that is
already on the brink of famine.
The
Palestinian militant group Hamas accused Israel of trying to undermine efforts
to secure a ceasefire in the seven-month-long war that has laid waste to Gaza
and left hundreds of thousands of its people homeless and hungry.
Israeli
army footage showed tanks rolling through the Rafah crossing complex and the
Israeli flag raised on the Gaza side.
U.N.
and other international aid agencies said the closing of the two crossings into
southern Gaza - Rafah and Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom - had virtually cut
the enclave off from outside aid and very few stores were available inside.
Red
Crescent sources in Egypt said shipments had completely halted.
"The
Israeli occupation has sentenced the residents of the Strip to death,"
said Hisham Edwan, spokesperson for the Gaza Border Crossing Authority.
The
seizure of the Rafah crossing came despite weeks of calls from the United
States, other goverments and international bodies for Israel to hold off from a
big offensive in the Rafah area - said by Israel to be the last stronghold of
Hamas fighters but also the refuge of more than one million displaced
Palestinian civilians.
Many
of the people now in Rafah were struggling to find a safe place to go in the
tiny strip of land which has been bombarded almost non-stop since Hamas
fighters stormed over the border into Israel on Oct. 7.
Families have been crammed into tented camps and makeshift shelters, suffering from shortages of food, water, medicine and other essentials.
Aid agencies say
famine is imminent as not enough food aid is reaching the enclave.
Residents
said Israeli tanks and planes also attacked several areas and houses in Rafah
overnight on Monday and on Tuesday.
The
Gaza health ministry said Israeli strikes across the enclave had killed 54
Palestinians and wounded 96 others in the past 24 hours.
On
Tuesday morning, people searched for bodies under the rubble of wrecked
buildings.
Raed
al-Derby said his wife and children had been killed.
Standing
in the street, anguish etched on his face, he told Reuters: "We're patient
and we will remain steadfast on this land.. We are waiting for liberation and
this battle will be for liberation, God willing."
The
Israeli military said a limited operation in Rafah was meant to kill fighters
and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which governs Gaza.
It
has told civilians to go to what it calls an "expanded humanitarian
zone" around 20 km away.
Patients
started to leave Abu Youssef Al-Najar hospital in east of Rafah after residents
and some inside the hospital received phone calls telling them to evacuate
areas designated by the Israeli army as a combat zone, medics and residents
said.
In
Geneva, U.N. humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke said "panic and
despair" were gripping the people in Rafah.
He
said that under international law people must have adequate time to prepare for
an evacuation, and have a safe route to a safe area with access to aid.
This
was not the case in the Rafah evacuation, he said.
"It's
littered with unexploded ordnance, massive bombs lying in the street. It's not
safe," he said.
A
total of 34,789 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been now killed in
the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
The
war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200
people and abducting about 250 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in
captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
U.N.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to Israel and Hamas to spare no
effort to get a truce deal and warned Israel that a full assault on Rafah would
"be a strategic mistake, a political calamity, and a humanitarian
nightmare."
Hamas
said late on Monday it had told Qatari and Egyptian mediators handling the
indirect talks that it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal but Israel said the
terms did not meet its demands.
On
Tuesday, the militant group said Israel's Rafah incursion was aimed at
undermining the ceasefire efforts.
However,
the various players appeared willing to talk again on Tuesday.
An
official briefed on the talks said the Israeli delegation had arrived in the
Egyptian capital Cairo, though Israel has reiterated its objective remained the
destruction of Hamas.
A
Palestinian official close to mediation efforts told Reuters a Hamas delegation
may arrive in Cairo later on Tuesday or on Wednesday to discuss the ceasefire.
Any
truce would be the first pause in fighting since a week-long ceasefire in
November during which Hamas freed around half of the hostages and Israel
released 240 Palestinians it was holding in its jails.
Since
then, all efforts to reach a new truce have foundered over Hamas' refusal to
free more hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict, and
Israel's insistence that it would discuss only a temporary pause.
A
U.S. State Department spokesperson said Washington believed a hostage deal was
in the best interest of the Israeli and the Palestinian people.
"It
would bring an immediate ceasefire and allow increased humanitarian assistance
into Gaza," the spokesperson said.
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