Israel strikes UN aid warehouse in Rafah
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: The United Nations’ main aid agency in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip said an Israeli strike hit one of its warehouses on Wednesday, killing an employee, as calls intensified for land routes to bring food into the besieged territory.
“At least one [agency] staff member was killed and another 22 were injured when Israeli forces hit a food distribution center in the eastern part of Rafah” in southern Gaza, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement.
Agency chief Philippe Lazzarini said the “attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centers in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some areas, turning into famine.”
Israel later said a Hamas militant was killed in a strike on Rafah, naming him as Muhammad Abu Hasna, one of four people the Gazan Health Ministry said were killed in the strike on the UNRWA facility.
Donor nations, aid agencies and charities pushed on with efforts to rush food to the impoverished territory of 2.4 million people, where more than five months of war have caused mass civilian deaths and reduced vast areas to a rubble-strewn wasteland.
Efforts to open a maritime corridor or airdrop aid over Gaza were “no alternative to aid delivery by land” as they could only provide a fraction of the needs, said a joint statement by 25 organizations, including Amnesty International and Oxfam.
A Spanish charity vessel, the Open Arms, was on its way to Gaza from Cyprus, towing a barge with 200 tons of aid, in a first voyage along a planned maritime corridor.
Trying an alternative land route from southern Israel, the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) sent an initial six aid trucks on Tuesday into worst-hit northern Gaza through a gate in the security fence, the Israeli army said.
“With people in northern Gaza on the brink of famine, we need deliveries every day. We need entry points directly into the north,” the WFP said.
As the war drags on and mediation efforts have so far failed to secure a new truce, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed again that his country’s forces “will reach every location” in their mission to destroy Hamas.
“There is no safe haven for terrorists in Gaza,” Gallant said on a tour of the Hamas-ruled territory, according to a video released by his office.
Global alarm
Located on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, Rafah has remained the coastal territory’s last population center spared an Israeli ground invasion, and Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened to send ground troops into the city.
The prospect of such an invasion — again touted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier on Wednesday — has sparked global alarm because it is crowded with almost 1.5 million mostly displaced Palestinians.
The deadliest-ever Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attacks that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in southern Israel, mostly civilians, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) count based on official figures shows.
The militants also took about 250 hostages, dozens of whom were released during a weeklong truce in November. Israel believes about 130 captives remain in Gaza but that 32 of them are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive have killed 31,272 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, said the territory’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said “approximately 100 terrorists were eliminated” during recent operations in Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s main city.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths lamented the “devastating news” of the strike on the UNRWA facility, saying on social media: “How are we to maintain aid operations when our teams and supplies are constantly under threat?”
“They must be protected,” he said. “This war has to stop.”
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters that “the Israeli army received the coordinates ... of this facility.”