Israel’s plans for a military offensive on Rafah in the Gaza Strip are “alarming”, the EU’s foreign policy chief has said.
Josep Borell said on social media platform X that “1.4 million Palestinians are currently in Rafah without safe place to go, facing starvation”, Agence France-Presse reports.
Rafah is the southernmost city in the Palestinian territory hit by Israel’s fierce offensive since Hamas’s 7 October attacks and many of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million have taken refuge there.
“Reports of an Israeli military offensive on Rafah are alarming,” Borell said.
It would have catastrophic consequences worsening the already dire humanitarian situation and the unbearable civilian toll.
Earlier, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told officials to “submit to the cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions” of Hamas holed up in Rafah, his office said.
Netanyahu said this week he had ordered troops to prepare to move into Rafah, and that “total victory” against the militants would come in months.
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires:
Iranian foreign minister Amir Abdollahian has held meetings in Lebanon with regional groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and various Palestinian groups, reports Al Jazeera citing according posts on Telegram.
According to the posts, Abdollahian met Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati to discuss bilateral, regional and international developments. He also met Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah and discussed political and security developments concerning the war in Gaza and the group’s fighting with Israel in southern Lebanon, says Al Jazeera.
The Qatar-based news organisation says Abdollahian met the leaders of Palestinian groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziad al-Nakhaleh and Osama Hamdan, a former senior representative of Hamas in Lebanon and a member of the organisation’s politburo.
A six-year-old Palestinian girl who went missing after the family’s car came under fire in Gaza has been found dead, the Hamas-run health ministry and her relatives said, accusing Israel of killing her reports AFP
The last time Hind Rajab had been seen was about two weeks ago when she was surrounded by dead relatives after becoming trapped in the vehicle as they tried to flee Gaza City as Israeli forces advanced. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) had frequently posted updates on its X account pleading for updates and information on Rajab. The BBC had also highlighted her story.
“Hind and everyone else in the car is martyred,” the girl’s grandfather, Baha Hamada told AFP. A number of family members found her and the other victims on Saturday when they went to Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa area looking for the car near a petrol station where it had last been spotted, he said.
“They were able to reach the area because Israeli forces withdrew early at dawn today,” Hamada added. The health ministry confirmed Hind’s death.
“She was killed by [Israeli] occupation forces with all those who were with her in the car outside the petrol station in Tel al-Hawa,” the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier this week, family members had said the group found their way in the path of Israeli tanks and were fired on as they tried to flee.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military did not comment on the incident.
Children are going without food for days and some people are resorting to grinding animal feed into flour to survive, says the BBC who spoke to people living in north Gaza. People also described digging down into the soil to access water pipes, for drinking and washing.
International charity ActionAid has said that food is becoming so scarce in Gaza that people are resorting to eating grass. “Every single person in Gaza is now hungry, and people have just 1.5 to 2 litres of unsafe water per day to meet all their needs,” said ActionAid in a statement published that warned intensifying attacks in Rafah would have “disastrous consequences”.
The UN’s Office for Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said on Friday that almost one in 10 of Gazan children under five are now acutely malnourished. Ocha also said more than half the aid missions to the north of Gaza were denied access last month, and that there is increasing interference from Israeli forces in how and where aid is delivered.
It says 300,000 people estimated to be living in northern areas are largely cut off from assistance, and face a growing risk of famine.
The food supplies that Gaza depends on have shrivelled from their prewar level, and aid workers have reported visible signs of starvation, especially in areas of northern and central Gaza worst hit by Israel’s war on Hamas since 7 October, reports Reuters.
Iran’s football federation said on Saturday it had asked world football’s governing body, Fifa, to suspend Israel’s football federation over the country’s war in Gaza, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In an announcement posted on the Iranian football federation’s website, Iran asked Fifa to “completely suspend” the Israeli federation “from all activities related to football”.
The request also asks for “immediate and serious measures” by Fifa and its member associations “to prevent the continuation” of the Israeli “crimes and provide food, drinking water, medicinal and medical supplies to innocent people and civilians”.
The Islamic republic does not recognise Israel and prohibits all contact between Iranian and Israeli athletes.
The Iranian authorities last August gave a lifetime ban to Mostafa Rajaei, a weightlifter, after he shook hands with an Israeli competitor at an event in Poland, state media reported at the time. The Iranian weightlifting federation also dismissed the head of the delegation for the competition, Hamid Salehinia.
In 2021, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged athletes “not to shake hands with a representative of the [Israeli] criminal regime to obtain a medal”.
A group of Middle Eastern football associations, including Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, have also “asked world football chiefs to ban Israel over the war on Hamas in Gaza,” Sky News reported on Thursday.
My colleague, Emine Sinmaz reported on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) press conference held in Jersualem on Friday. You can read the full story here:
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said he followed “reverse due process” in sacking nine staff members accused by Israel of being involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said he did not probe Israel’s claims against the employees before dismissing them and launching an investigation.
At a press conference in Jerusalem, Lazzarini was asked if he had looked into whether there was any evidence against the employees and he replied: “No, the investigation is going on now.”
He described the decision as “reverse due process”, adding: “I could have suspended them, but I have fired them. And now I have an investigation, and if the investigation tells us that this was wrong, in that case at the UN we will take a decision on how to properly compensate [them].”
The below satellite images provided by Planet Labs PBC show how the population of Rafah has swelled to more than 1.5 million people – roughly three-quarters of Gaza’s population – as people flee fighting elsewhere in Gaza. The southern Gaza town of is normally home to 280,000 people.
We have superimposed the two images here to bring the contrast into focus:
Israeli airstrikes that targeted a building in an upmarket area near the Syrian capital killed three people early Saturday, reports AFP citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed in the airstrikes but could not immediately confirm whether the dead were fighters.
Rahman added that many other people were injured in the strikes on a neighbourhood hosting “villas for top military and officials.”
The war monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria, earlier reported the “Israeli attack” on “a residential building west of the Syrian capital Damascus”, with the sound of “violent explosions”.
AFP say that state media reported that Syrian air defences responded to an Israeli “air attack”.
State news agency Sana cited a military source saying that at about 1.05 am (10.05pm GMT Friday), “the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of points in the Damascus countryside”.
Air defences responded to the missiles and “downed some of them”, the statement said, adding that the attack caused “some material losses”.
The strikes came hours after an area near a military airport west of Damascus came under missile attack on Friday, the Observatory said, while the defence ministry said drones had entered Syrian airspace from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The Observatory did not say who was behind what it described as a “missile” attack.
“Positions belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other pro-Iran groups are present” in the area, added the Observatory.
My colleague, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour has written this piece on a senior UN official who said Israel appears to be in breach of ICJ orders on Gaza. You can read the full piece at the link below:
Israel appears to be in breach of the orders issued a fortnight ago by the international court of justice requiring it to take immediate steps to protect Palestinians’ rights and cease all activities that could constitute genocide, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, has said.
The Israeli government was given until 23 February to report to the ICJ on what it has done to comply with six orders the court issued, including one relating to ending incitement to genocide and another requiring immediate steps to improve the supply of humanitarian aid.
Senior western officials say that despite hours of negotiations with Israeli officials there is at best a marginal and incremental improvement since the 26 January ruling. “Safe to say, it’s dire and getting worse,” one said.
Displaced Palestinians have flooded into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands are sleeping in tents pushed up against the Egyptian border, reports AgenceFrance-Presse (AFP).
AFP images showed scenes of devastation, with people queueing for increasingly scarce water. Rights groups have sounded alarm at the prospect of a ground incursion.
“Israel’s declared ground offensive on Rafah would be catastrophic and must not proceed,” Doctors Without Borders said in a statement. “There is no place that is safe in Gaza and no way for people to leave.”
“There is no safe place in Rafah. If they storm Rafah, we will die in our homes,” sixty-year-old Jaber al-Bardini told AFP.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry on Saturday said that at least 110 people were killed in overnight bombardment, including more than 20 in strikes in Rafah.
The previous day, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that three children were killed in a strike in Rafah. The PCRS also said that Israeli forces raided al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s biggest city, on Friday after a weeks-long siege during which the PRCS reported “intense artillery shelling and heavy gunfire”.
The medical organisation said Israeli forces had arrested eight of its team members at the hospital, including “four doctors, as well as four wounded individuals and five patients’ companions”.
A hospital official and Associated Press (AP) journalists say Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 28 Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Each strike killed multiple members of three families, including 10 children, the youngest just three months old, say AP.
The strikes early Saturday came hours after Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he asked the military to plan for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from the southern Gaza city ahead of a ground invasion.
He did not provide details or a timeline, but the announcement set off widespread panic. More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are packed into Rafah, many after being uprooted repeatedly by Israeli evacuation orders that now cover two-thirds of Gaza’s territory.
US officials have said an invasion of Rafah without a plan for the civilian population would lead to disaster.
Israel has carried out airstrikes in Rafah almost daily, even after telling civilians in recent weeks to seek shelter there from ground combat in the city of Khan Younis, just to the north, say AP.
In Khan Younis, the focus of the current ground combat, Israeli forces opened fire at Nasser hospital, the area’s largest, killing at least one person and wounding several, said Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesperson for the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
He said medical staff are no longer able to move between the facility’s buildings because of the intense fire. He said 300 medical personnel, 450 patients and 10,000 displaced people are sheltering in the hospital.
Israel’s plans for a military offensive on Rafah in the Gaza Strip are “alarming”, the EU’s foreign policy chief has said.
Josep Borell said on social media platform X that “1.4 million Palestinians are currently in Rafah without safe place to go, facing starvation”, Agence France-Presse reports.
Rafah is the southernmost city in the Palestinian territory hit by Israel’s fierce offensive since Hamas’s 7 October attacks and many of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million have taken refuge there.
“Reports of an Israeli military offensive on Rafah are alarming,” Borell said.
It would have catastrophic consequences worsening the already dire humanitarian situation and the unbearable civilian toll.
Earlier, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told officials to “submit to the cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions” of Hamas holed up in Rafah, his office said.
Netanyahu said this week he had ordered troops to prepare to move into Rafah, and that “total victory” against the militants would come in months.
We are restarting our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis. Here is an overview of the latest key developments.
Israel’s plans for a military offensive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip are “alarming”, the EU’s foreign policy chief has said.
“1.4 million Palestinians are currently in Rafah without safe place to go, facing starvation,” Josep Borell said on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday.
Many of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have taken refuge in the territory’s southernmost city.
“Reports of an Israeli military offensive on Rafah are alarming,” Borell said, adding it would have “catastrophic consequences”.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Friday that a “massive operation” was needed in Rafah and he ordered Israel’s military to prepare for evacuating the city ahead of an expected invasion.
More on that shorty. In other news:
The head of the Palestinian Authority said Israel’s escalation in Rafah aimed to push Palestinians from their land. The office of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said he held the Israeli and US governments responsible for any effects of the expected invasion and that Israel’s actions threatened regional peace and security.
Civilians in Gaza were at “grave risk of genocide” in response to Israel ordering people in Rafah to evacuate, said Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard.
The Norwegian Refugee Council’s secretary general warned of a “bloodbath” if Israeli operations expanded to Rafah. “No war can be allowed in a gigantic refugee camp,” Jan Egeland said. Aid workers said an Israeli advance into the area could cause mass deaths among those trapped there, with humanitarian aid in danger of collapse.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces had raided the society’s al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, and were searching it. “We’re finding it difficult to communicate with our crews inside the hospital,” the society said on Friday. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
At least 22 people, including children and women, were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Rafah and in central Gaza overnight into Friday. The attacks hit a residential building in Rafah and a kindergarten-turned-shelter for the displaced in the central town of Zuwaida. The dead and wounded were taken to nearby hospitals, where the bodies were seen Associated Press journalists.
Undercover Israeli killings in a West Bank hospital “may be war crimes”, a group of UN experts said. The killing of three Palestinian men in the hospital by Israeli commandos disguised as medical workers and Muslim women last month may meet the threshold for war crimes, they alleged.
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2024-02-10 10:32:00Z
CBMibWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRoZWd1YXJkaWFuLmNvbS93b3JsZC9saXZlLzIwMjQvZmViLzEwL21pZGRsZS1lYXN0LWNyaXNpcy1pc3JhZWwtZ2F6YS13YXItaGFtYXMtcmFmYWgtbGF0ZXN0LW5ld3PSAW1odHRwczovL2FtcC50aGVndWFyZGlhbi5jb20vd29ybGQvbGl2ZS8yMDI0L2ZlYi8xMC9taWRkbGUtZWFzdC1jcmlzaXMtaXNyYWVsLWdhemEtd2FyLWhhbWFzLXJhZmFoLWxhdGVzdC1uZXdz
