UNICEF warns against military operation in Rafah

ATHENS (AA) – UNICEF has warned against a military operation in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza, where over 600,000 children and their families – around a million people – have been displaced under the pressure of over four months of Israeli war.

“An escalation of the fighting in Rafah, which is already straining under the extraordinary number of people who have been displaced from other parts of Gaza, will mark another devastating turn in a war that has reportedly killed over 27,000 people – most of them women and children,” Catherine Russell, the agency’s executive director, said in a statement.

Calling on parties to the conflict to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, she added: “Military operations in densely populated residential areas can have indiscriminate effects.”

The statement came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to take Israeli military operations into Rafah, saying the war on Gaza will continue until Israel can claim “total victory”.

On Thursday, the US also warned that an Israeli military operation in Rafah “would be a disaster” for the more than 1 million displaced Palestinians.

Israel launched a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip on October 7 and has killed at least 27,947 Palestinians and injured 67,459 others.

The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

An interim ruling last month by the International Court of Justice told Israel to cease its abuses, but most international observers say it has been flagrantly flouting the ruling.