(UN News)* — Roughly 800,000 people have been forced to flee Rafah since Israel launched a military operation in the area on 6 May, the head of UN Palestine refugee agency UNRWA said on Saturday [] in a renewed appeal for greater protection of civilians in Gaza, safe humanitarian access and, ultimately, a ceasefire.
“Once again, nearly half of the population of Rafah or 800,000 people are on the road,” Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in post on the social media platform X. formerly Twitter.
He said that following evacuation orders demanding people to flee to so-called safe zones, people mainly went to the middle areas in Gaza and Khan Younis, including to destroyed buildings.
UNITED NATIONS, May 16 2024 (IPS)* – As the ancient Greek saying goes: those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive them mad. Perhaps destruction is too far-fetched here, but madness is closer home—in Washington DC
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With the 7-month-old Israeli-Gaza conflict showing no positive signs of a permanent solution, there is a lingering sense of growing political craziness in Capitol Hill, the seat of the US government, once described as Israeli-occupied territory.
Last week Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator from South Carolina, who once chaired the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, implicitly advised Israel it should drop nuclear bombs over Gaza—perhaps ignorant of the fact that a nuclear fallout will also destroy parts of Israel.
(UN News)* — Large parts of the city of Rafah are now a “ghost town”, with UN humanitarians reporting on Tuesday [] that some 450,000 Gazans have been forcibly displaced from the southernmost city by Israeli evacuation orders in the last week.
UNRWA | Smoke rises over Rafah as bombardments continue. (file)
“Empty streets in Rafah as families continue to flee in search of safety… UNRWA estimates that nearly 450,000 people have been forcibly displaced from Rafah since 6 May,” said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in a post from western Rafah on X.
“Inland in Rafah is now a ghost town. It’s hard to believe there were over one million people sheltering here just a week ago,” reported UNRWA spokesperson Louise Wateridge.
(Jerusalem) –Israeli forces have carried out at least eight strikes on aid workers’ convoys and premises in Gaza since October 2023, even though aid groups had provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities to ensure their protection, Human Rights Watch said on 14 May 2024.
Diaa Al-Kahlout, pictured after his return to Gaza after more than a month in Israeli detention, said he was interrogated over his journalism by Israel’s army and security service. Credit: Courtesy of Diaa Al-Kahlout
NEW YORK, May 1 2024 (IPS)* – Diaa Al-Kahlout, the veteran Gaza bureau chief for the Qatari-funded London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, had been covering the Israel-Gaza war for two months when he became part of the news.
On December 7, Al-Kahlout was detained along with members of his family by Israeli forces in a mass arrest in Beit Lahya in northern Gaza. Over 33 days in Israeli custody, he said he was interrogated about his journalism and subjected to physical and psychological mistreatment.
(UN News)* —Children as young as four are being forced to go to work in Lebanon amid a “massive collapse” in humanitarian funding and escalating hostilities on the country’s southern border with Israel that threaten to spiral into a “full-scale war”,UN child experts said on Tuesday [].
In a call for an immediate end to the war in Gaza which sparked intensifying exchanges of fire between armed militants Hezbollah and the Israeli military, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that airstrikes are hitting “deeper and deeper” into Lebanon, with 344 people killed to date, including eight youngsters.
(UN News)* — The head of UN peacekeeping and demining reiterated calls on Monday [] for a ceasefire in Gaza as a first step to returning the war-ravaged enclave to some normality, while mine clearance experts warned that the Strip is now at its “most dangerous period”.
“This is the most dangerous period; once people start returning to the north, that’s when most accidents will occur because they won’t be familiar with where your unexploded ordnance is located,” said Mungo Birch, Chief of the UN Mine Action Programme (UNMAS) in the State of Palestine.
“It’s important that once the returns start, we’re poised and ready to be able to provide the risk education they need.”
Unexpected blistering temperatures across Gaza have added to the daily misery faced by the enclave’s people and sparked new fears of disease outbreaks amid a lack of sufficient clean water and waste disposal, UN humanitarians said on Thursday [].
The warning from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, came as some 1.2 million people continued to shelter in tents pitched in and around the enclave’s southernmost city, Rafah, with nowhere else to go.
“It is like living in a greenhouse, no-one can tolerate living inside,” the UN agency said, quoting Mustafa Radwan, formerly from Gaza City, in a social media post on X.
(UN News)* — UN-coordinated food convoys are three times more likely to be denied access to north Gaza than other aid convoys, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported on Tuesday [9 April 2024].
Israeli authorities have not given a clear reason why, said OCHA Spokesperson Jens Laerke, speaking during the regular briefing by UN humanitarian agencies in Geneva.
“They very often deny and that is it, and it ends there. We do not get an explanation,” he said.
(UN News)* — The President of the UN General Assembly appealed on Monday [8 April 2024] for “all those with leverage” to use their power to bring an end to the six-month-long war in Gaza.
Dennis Francis convened the UN’s most representative body, comprising all 193 Member States, following the Security Council’s failure to adopt a resolution put forward by the United States last month.
The debate was triggered by a 2022 Assembly resolution that calls for a meeting to be held within 10 working days whenever a veto is cast in the Council.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 