From deadly attacks on medical staff to devastated urban areas, the situation in Gaza is rapidly worsening, further discouraging humanitarian groups struggling to address the toll of Israel’s war with Hamas, aid officials said Thursday. .
The situation has worsened over the past three weeks as Israel has carried out military operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Rafah was previously where more than half of the population found refuge during the war. Fighting there has led to mass displacement and widespread destruction of health and humanitarian services.
“Our humanitarian partners working in Gaza tell us the situation is worse than ever,” Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote on social media Thursday.
Senior members of the Biden administration have said in recent days that the situation for civilians in Gaza has been worsening but has not yet reached a point where it would trigger a change in U.S. policy on arming Israel. President Biden warned earlier this month that the United States would block certain arms transfers if Israel targets the populated area of Rafah in a large-scale offensive.
Many humanitarian and medical groups have described the crisis as deepening, not only because aid supplies have been significantly reduced, but also because the intensity of the bombings has forced hospitals to close and clinics to relocate.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Thursday that two of its medical staff had been killed in Israeli airstrikes, bringing the number of staff and volunteers killed in the war in Gaza to 19.
“This is a stark reminder of the grim reality health workers face: death, exhaustion and horrific scenes every day,” the International Crescent Committee wrote of the attack.
In response to a request for comment on the strike, the Israeli military told The New York Times that a “suspicious vehicle” approached Israeli soldiers in a way that “posed a threat to troops operating in the Rafah area.”
“Therefore, the IDF tank opened fire on the vehicle,” the military added, referring to the Israel Defense Forces, in the statement. They said a strike was under consideration.
Aid groups have issued increasingly urgent warnings about the situation around Rafah, as well as the impact the fighting there has had on humanitarian work across Gaza. The town’s border crossing with Egypt was a major route for aid delivery, but has been closed for weeks due to fighting. Aid shipments to the region have fallen by 67% since Israel began its campaign there, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Thursday that 53 people were killed in heavy fighting outside Rafah and Gaza City in the past 24 hours.
Videos made Thursday by residents who flocked to the village of Jabaliya after Israeli tanks withdrew showed block after block of cratered concrete blocks and pancake buildings.
The widespread destruction highlights the daily struggle of civilians and aid workers seeking safety.
Confusion and fear intensified on Sunday when a fire was set on a refugee camp in Tal district, in the Rafah Sultanate, killing 45 people, and on Tuesday a strike broke out in Al Mawasi, a coastal district near Rafah, killing 21 people. Both civilians and aid workers.
Israel claimed that it did not attack the area it designated as a ‘humanitarian zone’ where an evacuation order from the Gaza Strip was issued. But social media posts and leaflets dropped by Israel to identify Gaza were sometimes unclear.
Some of the civilians contacted said they had never seen the leaflets, while others said they were confused by the instructions, which included the numbering system the IDF uses to describe different areas.
“We don’t understand the instructions in the leaflets dropped by the army,” said Rafif Aziz, 37, a mother of four who recently moved from Rafah to Deir al-Balah. Deir al-Bala is what an Israeli military spokesman calls a “safer” zone. . “We ask each other and go with what the majority believes.”
Even if civilians and humanitarian organizations understand the guidelines, they can still be difficult to follow.
Louise Waterridge, spokeswoman for UNRWA, the main U.N. agency supporting Palestine, said unreliable mobile networks in the region made it difficult for aid groups like hers to explain to staff where it was safe to go or move equipment.
Mr Waterridge said leaflets often spread more fear to residents than useful information.
“What can I tell people?” She said. “No one knows where to go. There is panic and chaos. “Many people think the leaflet just means that death is coming.”
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Abu Bakr Bashir and Johnatan Reiss contributed to the report.
