The United Nations (UN) Humanitarian Office announced today that the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings have been closed, preventing the entry of much-needed humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
“The two main arteries for the delivery of aid to Gaza have been cut off,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in Geneva.
The Israeli army announced early this morning that its forces had taken control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
Following the announcement by the Palestinian group Hamas of accepting the Qatari-Egyptian ceasefire proposal in Gaza, the Israeli war cabinet decided to continue the operation in Rafah to exert “military pressure on Hamas to advance the release of hostages and other war objectives”.
The Israeli army issued an emergency order to evacuate Palestinians in the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah and called on them to move to the town of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.
Rafah is home to more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians, who fled the war launched by Israel after a Hamas attack on October 7 that killed nearly 1,200 people.
Since then, Israeli attacks have killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and caused a humanitarian disaster.
Nearly seven months after the start of the war, vast swathes of Gaza are in ruins, while 85 percent of the enclave’s population is internally displaced.
Israel is accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop the genocidal acts and take measures to ensure humanitarian aid is provided to civilians in Gaza, AA writes.
