Gaza truce talks end inconclusively as Rafah braces for Israeli assault
CAIRO/JERUSALEM/GAZA, (Reuters) - Talks involving the U.S., Egypt, Israel and Qatar on a Gaza truce ended without a breakthrough yesterday as calls grew for Israel to hold back on a planned assault on the southern end of the enclave, crammed with over a million displaced people.
The city of Rafah, whose pre-war population was about 300,000, teems with homeless people living in tent camps and makeshift shelters who fled there from Israeli bombardments in areas of Gaza farther north during more than four months of war.
Israel says it wants to flush out Hamas militants from hideouts in Rafah and free Israeli hostages being held there. Its military is making plans to evacuate Palestinian civilians. But no plan has been forthcoming and aid agencies say the displaced have nowhere else to go in the shattered territory.
With Palestinians in Rafah “staring death in the face,” United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said an Israeli ground invasion there would make humanitarian relief nearly impossible.
“Military operations in Rafah could lead to a slaughter in Gaza. They could also leave an already fragile humanitarian operation at death’s door,” Griffiths said in a statement.
Israeli tanks shelled the eastern sector of Rafah overnight, causing waves of panic, residents said.
They said displaced people - dozens so far - had begun to leave Rafah after Israeli shelling and air strikes in recent days.
“Last night in Rafah was very tough. We’re going back to Al-Maghazi out of fear - displaced from one area to another,” said Nahla Jarwan, referring to the coastal refugee camp from which she fled earlier in the conflict. “Wherever we go, there is no safety.”
Rafah neighbours Egypt, but Cairo has made clear it will not allow a refugee exodus over the border.
Gaza health officials announced 133 new Palestinian deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 28,473 killed and 68,146 wounded since Oct. 7, when 1,200 people were killed in a Hamas rampage across the border into Israel, triggering the war.
Many other people are believed to be buried under rubble of destroyed buildings across the densely populated Gaza Strip, much of which is in ruins. Supplies of food, water and other essentials are running out and diseases are spreading.
About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are now squeezed into Rafah.
“Since Israel said they are invading Rafah soon..., we read our last prayers every night. Every night we say farewell to one another and to relatives outside Rafah,” said Aya, 30, who is living in a tent with her mother, grandmother and five siblings. (Reuters) - Haitian gangs are increasingly economically autonomous, a Geneva-based criminal research group warned, using funds coerced from private businesses, local residents and families of kidnapping victims to pay for guns and soldiers.
“Gangs have undergone a radical evolution, going from rather unstructured actors dependent on resources provided by public or private patronage to violent entrepreneurs,” said the report, published on Monday by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime report.
“These entities are nowadays far more economically autonomous and territorially powerful, making them less controllable,” added the report, which cites anonymous interviews with politicians, police, aid workers, businessmen and residents across the Caribbean nation.
This, it said, poses myriad challenges to a longawaited U.N.-backed international force, which Haiti’s unelected government requested to support its under-resourced police and alleviate the humanitarian crisis back in October 2022.
The U.N. ratified this force late last year, but information has yet to be released on how big it will be and when it will deploy.
According to the report, businesses are being coerced into paying gangs up to $20,000 per week as well as percentages on containers coming off ships, sometimes helping arrange arms deliveries in lieu of cash payments.
Gang checkpoints, which abound on roads into the capital and delineating rival gangs’ shifting territories collect up to $8,000 per day and have become highly bureaucratized, some even issuing weekly cards to process people faster, it said.
The report also said the so-called kidnapping “industry” could be conservatively estimated to generate some $25 million per year, especially factoring in a growing trend of abducting commuters by busload.
In the capital’s hardhit Cite Soleil and Canaan areas, it added, there were reports of bodies being left on streets with missing organs and gang clinics being used for organ extraction, pointing to possible trafficking.
The report recommended the U.N.-backed force prioritize securing the country’s land and sea borders to prevent further stocking of assault weapons, take measures to prevent intel leaking and arms theft and strategize with sanctions committees.