2023-10-14 15:17:00
Photo: AFP.
The Israeli army urged this Saturday the inhabitants of the northern Gaza Strip to “not delay” their evacuation to the south of the Palestinian enclave, after extending the ultimatum until 4 p.m. local time (10 a.m. in Argentina) before a possible ground military offensive.
Israel designated two safe routes so that the population of the northern part of the enclavejust over a million people, head south, in an order that was rejected by the UN, humanitarian NGOs and the European Union (EU).
There is a “window from 10 to 16” (4 to 10 Argentine time), a military spokesman, Richard Hecht, told the press, hours after the initial 24-hour deadline to leave the area had expired.
“We know it will take time, but we advise people not to delay,” he added in statements quoted by the AFP news agency.
The damage of war
Since the start of the fighting last Saturday, after a bloody attack by Hamas, around 1,300 people have died in Israel, 258 of them soldiers, according to the Army, and another 2,215 have died on the Gaza side, including 724 children, agreement with the Palestinian authorities.
More than 1,300 buildings in the Gaza Strip were completely destroyedThe United Nations (UN) reported this Saturday, one week after the intense bombing by the Israeli army following the Hamas incursion into Israeli territory.
Some 5,540 homes “were destroyed” in these buildings and another 3,750 suffered such serious damage that they cannot be inhabited, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In addition, the UN agency specialized in Palestinian refugees warned that there are more than two million people in the Gaza Strip who are running out of drinking water due to the blockade of humanitarian aid from entering the enclave.
“Across the Gaza Strip, more than 2 million people are at risk of running out of water”indicated the commissioner general of the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini.
???? UNRWA shelters in ????#Gaza and northern Gaza are no longer safe.
This is unprecedented.
This war should not be an exception, the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, including UN buildings, also applies to this conflict.https://t.co/vve5a1owJd
— UNRWA.es (@UNRWAes) October 14, 2023
In tune, Unicef warned that hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza are in a “catastrophic” situation after a week of Israeli counterattacks and urged the need for all parties to declare a ceasefire.
Meanwhile, thousands of Gazans have already fled from the north to the south of the enclave in cars, buses, motorcycles, by donkey and on foot.
The UN, the United States and the European Union asked Israel to delay any possible offensive, to give civilians time to take refuge.
Europe’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, described as “totally impossible to execute” the Israeli plan to evacuate more than a million people from northern Gaza in one day.
“I am saying that, representing the official position of the European Union… (the evacuation plan) is totally impossible to execute,” Borrell told reporters in Beijing at the end of a three-day visit to China.
“Imagining that you can move a million people in 24 hours, in a situation like Gaza, can only be a humanitarian crisis,” he added.
But beyond these criticisms, Israel insists on carrying out the evacuation: “If you are worried about yourself and your loved ones, go south according to instructions,” wrote the Arabic spokesman for the Israeli Army, Avichay Adraee, via from social network X.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas after meeting in Tel Aviv on Friday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is in the region to lead diplomatic efforts.
Meanwhile, the bombings continue on the Gaza Strip and in one of them one of the Hamas leaders who led the massive attack against Israeli territory last Saturday died.
The Israeli air force “killed Ali Qadi, a commander of the Hamas ‘Nukhba’ (“elite” in Arabic) unit, which led the attack on towns near the Gaza Strip,” an Israeli military spokesman said in a statement. , without specifying the exact location of the bombing.
In these last hours, Israel also announced the death in an attack in the Gaza Strip of the head of Hamas air operations, Murad Abu Murad, also considered one of the organizers of the incursion that triggered the new escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip. region.
#Israel #asked #civilians #northern #Gaza #delay #evacuation