2023-10-15 14:59:12
According to UN estimates, around a million people have been displaced in the Gaza Strip in the first week of the war between Israel and Hamas. The actual number of internally displaced people is likely to be even higher as many people in the coastal area continued to leave their homes, UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) spokeswoman Juliette Touma said on Sunday.
The Israeli army called on civilians in the north of the Gaza Strip to flee early on Friday. According to its own statements, the Israeli military is preparing for a ground offensive in the Palestinian territory. The army reiterated on Sunday that it would not carry out any attacks on a route from the north of the Gaza Strip within three hours so that residents in the south of the Palestinian territory might reach safety. Israel accuses Hamas of blocking the escape of civilians in order to use them as “human shields.”
According to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Israeli request triggered a “mass exodus”. “Mass exodus from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip is underway,” the UN office said in Geneva on Sunday. Partner aid organizations have reported that “the number of internally displaced people has increased significantly in the last 24 hours,” said OCHA. Their exact number is not known. OCHA had previously reported that 423,378 internally displaced people had been counted in the Gaza Strip as of late Thursday evening. Almost two thirds of them were accommodated by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in a total of 102 emergency shelters.
According to the Austrian Foreign Ministry, there are currently around three dozen Austrians and their relatives in the Gaza Strip. Most of them are dual citizens and they are already in the south of the Gaza Strip, the APA was told on Saturday evening. In cooperation with Israel and Egypt, efforts are being made to enable those wanting to leave the Palestinian territory to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing.
The Israeli army announced on Sunday another window of opportunity for the evacuation of civilians in the north of the Gaza Strip towards the south. The Israeli army spokesman published the information in Arabic on
The army will not attack this corridor during this period. Anyone who cares regarding the safety of their family should head south, the message said. Hamas, which rules in the Gaza Strip, looks following its own members and their families. There were also reports that Hamas was preventing civilians from fleeing. Israel has repeatedly accused the Islamist organization of using its own population as human shields.
Israel’s calls to the people of Gaza are also conveyed through other channels, including through leaflets. According to the military, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have already moved to the south of the narrow coastal strip following previous evacuation calls. Around 2.3 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip.
The US government, however, insisted on protecting the civilian population. “We stand for the protection of civilians, and we want to ensure that innocent Palestinians who have nothing to do with Hamas can get to safe areas where they are protected from bombardment and have access to essentials such as food, water, shelter and medicine,” US President Joe Biden’s security adviser Jake Sullivan said on US television on Sunday. He had just been in contact with an Israeli colleague who told him that Israel had restarted the water pipeline in the southern Gaza Strip. Regarding the temporary opening of the Rafah border crossing from Gaza to Egypt to US citizens, Sullivan said that the situation there is very complicated. Egypt did allow the country to leave the country and promised Israel that it would be possible to leave safely. However, the Islamist Hamas has “taken steps” to prevent the departure.
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