Tel Aviv/Gaza, Oct. 16, (dpa/GNA) – An estimated 1 million people have fled from the northern Gaza Strip to the south of the coastal enclave ahead of an expected Israeli ground invasion, prompting renewed calls for the territory’s southern border with Egypt to be opened.
“We’ve seen about 1 million people move from the north to the south due to the possible threat of Israeli intervention in the north,” said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths.
“My main concerns right now … is to get aid into Gaza,” Griffiths said on Monday in Geneva.
It was of the utmost importance to help the people on the move as well as those already in southern Gaza, “because they won’t get out of Gaza,” he said.
Griffiths said he plans to travel to Cairo on Tuesday to negotiate with senior Egyptian officials on opening the southern border for aid deliveries.
He said the UN was engaged in “hourly” negotiations with Israel about aid access.
Large amounts of aid is ready to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt, but Israel is not allowing the Rafah crossing to be opened, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday.
“Unfortunately the Israeli government has so far not taken a stance that makes it possible to open the crossing from Gaza, allow aid to enter or for citizens of third countries to leave,” Shoukry told reporters in Cairo.
Sources had previously said that Egypt’s only border crossing with the Gaza Strip was set to reopen on Monday.
Some 2,000 tons of relief supplies are ready in North Sinai’s al-Arish city, which lies some 50 kilometres away from the Rafah crossing, the head of the Egyptian Red Crescent in North Sinai, Khaled Zayed, told dpa.
The Israeli army continued to shell Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight. According to the news website Ynet, citing Palestinians, last night’s was the heaviest bombardment to date.
At least 2,750 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the worst escalation of violence in years between the Israelis and Palestinians began nine days ago, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday.
A further 9,700 people have been injured, the ministry said.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is classified as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States and Israel.
The Israeli air bombardment came after the brutal surprise attack on Israeli civilians carried out by Hamas fighters near the Gaza border on October 7. The massacre left more than 1,300 dead, including 286 servicemen and women.
Some 199 people were taken hostage by Hamas, the military said. The hostages are being held in Gaza, and the risk to their lives makes a ground operation more complicated for Israeli troops.
UN workers have said that essential supplies of all kinds in Gaza are running out.
Hospitals in the Palestinian territory had only 24 hours’ worth of fuel left to run emergency generators, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said late on Sunday. A shutdown of the generators would put thousands of patients at “immediate risk,” the agency warned in its latest situation report.
The coastal strip on the Mediterranean Sea is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with about 2.2 million people living on around 45 square kilometres.
Israel had for decades occupied the area and had settlements there, but evacuated these in 2005.
A war in Gaza in 2014 killed many hundreds of people, with the majority of casualties on the Palestinian side.
During this latest conflict, Israel has also faced rocket attacks from its northern border by the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia, but the situation had apparently calmed down on Monday.
A Lebanese security source told dpa that “so far it is calm … the Israeli army is still combing areas close to the border with Lebanon in search for possible infiltrators.”
GNA