UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency: Rafah cannot be evacuated
Published: Thursday, Feb 15th 2024, 04:50
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The head of the UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) sees no possibility of evacuating people from the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip as demanded by Israel. "Evacuation to where? There is no safe place in Gaza," Philippe Lazzarini told the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" (Thursday). The north is littered with unexploded ordnance. The population could not be taken there. There is acute malnutrition there and famine is imminent. "There is nowhere to evacuate to."
Israel's government has called on UN organizations working in the region to help evacuate civilians from Rafah. The armed forces see Rafah as the last bastion of the Islamist Hamas, which they want to destroy in the course of the Gaza war. According to UN figures, more than 1.4 million people who have fled from Israeli attacks in other parts of the Gaza Strip are now camped in the city, which once had a population of 300,000. Israel had proposed the construction of extensive tent cities for the population to be evacuated further north of Rafah.
Lazzarini said that the population had already fled several times within the coastal area. More than 100,000 people had either been killed or injured or were missing. In the Gaza Strip, almost 18,000 children had been orphaned in just four months.
The Palestinian aid organization had come under massive criticism: Twelve UNRWA employees are alleged to have been involved in the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7. At the weekend, Israel also announced that it had discovered a tunnel under the UNRWA headquarters in the city of Gaza that had served Hamas as a data center for the militia's military intelligence service. Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz called for the UNRWA chief to be replaced.
Lazzarini once again rejected this. The UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency is in an existential crisis, he said. "I don't think it would be sensible to abandon ship at a time like this."
©Keystone/SDA
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