UN says 800,000 have fled fierce fighting in Rafah

Rafah, Palestinian Territories – AFP

Heavy Israeli bombardment rocked the southern Gaza city of Rafah Saturday, as the United Nations said 800,000 people had been “forced to flee” Israel’s assault.

Israel’s military said air strikes hit more than 70 targets across Gaza while ground troops conducted “targeted raids” in eastern Rafah, killing 50 Palestinian resistance fighters and locating dozens of tunnel shafts.

Philippe Lazzarini of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said that since Israel’s Rafah operation began, there had been a massive movement of people.

“800,000 people are on the road having been forced to flee since the Israeli forces started the military operation in the area on 6 May,” the UNRWA chief said on X.

He said people were fleeing to areas without water supplies or adequate sanitation.

It came as political divisions in Israel’s war cabinet burst into the open on Saturday night, with minister Benny Gantz saying he would quit unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip.

Gantz called for six goals to be met, including establishing a multinational civilian administration for Gaza.

Netanyahu hit back, calling the threat “washed-up words” that would mean “defeat for Israel”.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it fired a barrage of rockets towards Israel’s port of Ashkelon and targeted an Israeli command centre at the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Late Saturday, Israel’s military issued new evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza, saying Palestinian fighters in the area had fired rockets at Israel.

Earlier, an AFP reporter said air strikes and artillery pounded eastern Rafah as warplanes overflew the city on Gaza’s border with Egypt.

More than 10 days into what the army called a “limited” Rafah operation that sparked the exodus, fighting has also flared again in northern Gaza.

Israel said in early January it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure in the north, but the army said Hamas had been “in complete control here in Jabalia until we arrived a few days ago”.

Hamas slammed Israel’s “escalating crimes of the occupation” and “intensified brutal raids” on Jabalia, saying they had killed dozens of civilians and wounded hundreds.

– ‘Advancing and retreating’ –

Palestinian sources in Rafah said Israeli forces were operating in the Al-Salam and Jenina neighbourhoods and on the Philadelphi route along the Egyptian border.

“Troops are advancing and retreating around these areas,” a security source said.

Cairo, which has been involved in mediation efforts, says a potential Israeli takeover of Philadelphi could violate the two countries’ landmark 1979 peace deal.

Meanwhile, Israel said it killed two senior Islamic Jihad militants in air strikes in the northern West Bank and in Rafah.

In northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, witnesses reported air strikes near Kamal Adwan hospital on Saturday.

Its director Hussam Abu Safiya said Friday the facility had received “large numbers” of casualties from nearby Jabalia and was running low on supplies.

Its fuel supply was “barely enough for a few days”, he told AFP.

The World Health Organization has received no medical supplies in Gaza since the Rafah operation began, spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said Friday.