Satellite imagery shows tent city being built near Khan Younis
Satellite photos analysed by The Associated Press news agency appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Gaza’s city of Khan Younis.
The AP report comes as the Israeli military continues to threaten a ground invasion of nearby Rafah city, where about 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. Images from Planet Labs PBC show the tents first being set up on April 16. On comparing them with the images taken on Sunday, the compound appears to have grown.
The Israeli military said it wasn’t involved in constructing the tent city. Israel earlier said it planned to evacuate the hundreds of thousands of civilians from Rafah before its invasion. The US, however, says it has yet to receive a viable plan of how it will do so.
Khan Younis has been the repeated target of Israeli attacks since December.
Will UAE and Egypt ‘coordinate’ with Israel on Rafah evacuation?
Quoting unnamed Egyptian officials briefed on the Israeli invasion plan, The Wall Street Journal reports an evacuation operation, lasting two to three weeks, would be carried out in coordination with the US and Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
The newspaper said Israel planned to send its troops into Rafah gradually, targeting areas where it believes Hamas leaders and fighters are hiding, and expects the fighting to last at least six weeks.
Palestinians have limited options in the event of an Israeli ground assault on Rafah. They could topple the wall and barbed wire separating the city from Egypt, attempt to return to the north of the Gaza Strip, which the army does not currently allow, or flee towards the Mediterranean coast.
Israel’s attack on Rafah with hundreds of thousands of people there would be “catastrophic”, many critics have warned.
Aid workers say ‘no idea’ what Israel’s Rafah plan is
A threatened Israeli ground assault on Rafah has humanitarian groups scrambling for ways to help the 1.5 million civilians sheltering in the besieged southern Gaza city.
The uncertain timeline of such an attack poses a logistical nightmare, they say. “We always are prepared with plans to upscale or downscale, but really we don’t know what to expect,” said Bushra Khalidi, head of the British charity Oxfam.
Aid groups say they haven’t been briefed on Israel’s plans. Earlier this month, Israeli media reported the Defence Ministry bought 10,000 tents to be set up outside Rafah over the next two weeks and planned to acquire 30,000 more.
“I have no idea what the plan with the procurement of tents by the Israelis is,” said the head of the UN humanitarian office in the occupied Palestinian territory, Andrea de Domenico.
