Middle East conflict - UN: Number of civilians killed in Gaza "increasing rapidly"
According to the United Nations, the expansion of Israeli attacks in the south of the Gaza Strip is resulting in more and more civilian deaths. "The number of civilians killed is increasing rapidly," wrote Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the Palestinian Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in a statement. Civilians, including women, children, the elderly, the sick and people with disabilities, are the main victims of the war. With the resumption of the military operation and its expansion in the south, "the horrors of the past weeks are being repeated", lamented Lazzarini.
The bombardment by the Israeli armed forces continues after a further evacuation order was issued to move people from the city of Chan Junis to Rafah. "This order caused panic, fear and unrest," it said. At least 60,000 more people have been forced to move to already overcrowded UNRWA shelters, and others are asking for protection, Lazzarini added. Many of the people had already fled the war several times to other parts of the sealed-off area.
Lazzarini: No place in Gaza is safe
The evacuation order is squeezing people into less than a third of the Gaza Strip. "They need everything: food, water, shelter and, above all, safety. The roads to the south are clogged," it said. Claims that the United Nations had thousands of tents and was planning to open new refugee camps in Rafah were false, the UN representative explained. No place in Gaza is safe, neither in the south nor in the southwest, neither in Rafah nor in any designated "safe zone".
The Israeli army has activated an evacuation map that divides the Gaza Strip into hundreds of small zones to inform civilians about combat zones. However, critics complain that many people have neither electricity nor internet access to view the map. Many also do not know how to use it. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled there from the north of the territory on Israel's orders are crowded into southern Gaza.
The war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel's history, carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups on October 7 in Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip. As a result, more than 1200 people were killed on the Israeli side, including at least 850 civilians.
According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, almost 15,900 people have now been killed in Israeli counter-attacks. The casualty figures cannot currently be independently verified, but the United Nations and other observers point out that the authority's figures have proven to be generally credible in the past.
Read also:
Source: www.stern.de
