The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called on Israel to prevent the “forcible displacement” of 600,000 children in Rafah. AFP informs about it. At the same time, UNICEF warns that these children, who are crowded in the south of the Gaza Strip, are at risk of disaster.
The Israeli army announced on Monday morning that it had called on civilians in the eastern part of Rafah to evacuate. The reason for this is the “limited scope” operation, which is supposed to lead to the destruction of the radical Hamas movement. But there are fears that Tel Aviv will launch a long-awaited offensive, with the Gaza Civil Defense Authority saying that Israeli forces have already stepped up their bombardment of two Rafah neighborhoods that they ordered evacuated in the morning. According to Israel, Rafah is the last bastion of Hamas.
The Israeli army has been bombing the area there since last year, although not as intensively as other parts of the Gaza Strip. At the same time, Rafah originally belonged to a “safe zone” where civilians could take refuge before the fight between Israel and Hamas in the north of the strip, where famine is now at risk. UNICEF is now warning that there is a high concentration of children in the southern Gaza city, many of whom are extremely vulnerable and on the verge of survival.
“Rafah is now a city of children who have nowhere to go safely in Gaza. If large-scale military operations are launched, children will be at risk not only of violence, but also of chaos and panic, at a time when their physical and psychological state is already very fragile,” UNICEF chief Catherine Russell warned.
The UN estimates that Rafah, once home to more than 250,000 people, is now home to around 1.2 million refugees from across the Gaza Strip. Half of them are children, “many of whom have been displaced multiple times and are sheltering in tents or in insecure and unstable housing,” UNICEF added. In addition, according to Russell, hundreds of thousands of these children are “injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized or physically disabled.” She pointed out that 78,000 infants under the age of two and 175,000 children under the age of five suffer from one or more infectious diseases.
Gaza on the brink of famine
In the Gaza Strip, what the world last remembers from South Sudan or Somalia could happen within a few weeks. Famine may threaten up to 1.1 million people, according to the UN. But Palestinians, including children, are already dying of hunger.
Tags: Hundreds thousands children Rafah risk disaster UNICEF warns
