‘Extremely desperate situation’ unfolding in Gaza Strip
It’s extremely desperate here in Gaza in light of the unprecedented Israeli escalation.
We are on the front lines of an escalating scenario where the Israeli military has been intensifying all sorts of aerial, land, and naval attacks on the already battered Gaza Strip that has been suffering from a soaring humanitarian and security crisis for 17 months.
In the last hours, we’ve seen Israeli raids on a group of residential homes in the city of Khan Younis where … 15 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, while 40 were wounded.
This is not the first attack that was carried out in this area. A number or air raids took place in other parts of the Strip, but the concentration has been … on the city of Khan Younis.
Families started to evacuate from their neighbourhoods [in parts of Khan Younis] … moving to al-Mawasi and the central areas of Gaza, looking for any place that might be safe.
The Israeli military has been issuing forced evacuation orders for residents in the south and the north of the Strip, telling them to head to areas designated as “safe humanitarian zones”.
Death toll rises to 591 in renewed Israeli attacks across Gaza
Gaza’s media office says at least 591 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 72 hours. At least 1,042 have been wounded, it added. Many others – an “unknown number” of people – remain stuck under the rubble.
The office said more than 70 percent of those killed in the past days were women and children.
Bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli raids are brought to the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip
Foreign UN worker killed in Gaza yesterday identified
The UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) has confirmed the identity of its staff member who was killed yesterday when two UN guesthouses were hit by an attack in Deir el-Balah.
In a statement, UNOPS identified the staff member as Marin Valev Marinov, 51, from Bulgaria, and added that five other UNOPS colleagues were wounded.
Three of those wounded worked in support of the UN Mine Action Service, while others worked in support of the UN 2720 Mechanism for Gaza. They are all now in hospital, the statement said.
The UN is launching an investigation into the incident and expects “full support” from Israeli authorities, the statement said.
Israeli forces invaded Rafah ‘without warning’
Israeli forces invaded Rafah without even notifying or warning the residents of Rafah.
During the ceasefire’s first phase, Palestinians who used to live in Rafah went back to Rafah. What happened is that the Israeli military started launching artillery shelling, air strikes and strikes from drones, and started extensively firing and shelling Rafah.
People were shocked and started moving as soon as the shelling started.
But we’re also seeing another ground invasion in Beit Lahiya, in the northern parts of the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces also continue to carry out a ground invasion but also artillery shelling and air strikes.
Israeli forces took over the Netzarim Corridor which is in the centre of the Gaza Strip, splitting the northern parts from the southern parts and this is obviously a wide escalation in Israeli operations on the ground against Palestinians.
Netanyahu threatened Gaza escalation ‘wider and more intense’ than war so far
Israeli forces initially went into the Netzarim Corridor yesterday in an effort to expand this buffer zone to divide the Gaza Strip in half, then we saw earlier in the day Israeli forces invading the northern part of Gaza, and now invading Rafah, an area in southern Gaza that they had been operating in for months.
It’s also worth mentioning that the Israeli military had issued evacuation orders a day ago for the entire Gaza border periphery — an indication that they were starting more ground raids and invasions once again.
Nonetheless, the Israeli prime minister, a couple of days ago after announcing that Israel was breaking the ceasefire, said that these campaigns are going to continue from land, air and sea and that they are going to be of a much wider and more intense scale than we saw in the 15 months of fighting.
Essay Pro