DUBAI: Around one million people have fled the Gazan city of Rafah in the past three weeks, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Tuesday.
The small city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip had been sheltering more than a million Palestinians who fled Israeli assaults on other parts of the enclave.
Since early May, Israel’s military has been carrying out what it says is a limited operation in Rafah to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which runs Gaza. It has told civilians to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” some 20 kilometers away.
Many Palestinians have complained they are vulnerable to Israeli attacks wherever they go and have been moving up and down the Gaza Strip in the past few months.
UNRWA said the flight from Rafah “happened with nowhere safe to go and amidst bombardments, lack of food and water, piles of waste and unsuitable living conditions.”
Providing assistance and protection is becoming nearly “impossible,” the agency said.
UNRWA says around 1 million people have fled Rafah in past 3 weeks
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UNRWA says around 1 million people have fled Rafah in past 3 weeks
- Many Palestinians have complained they are vulnerable to Israeli attacks wherever they go
Macron, Iraqi Kurdish leader urge ‘de-escalation’ in Syria
- The Islamist-led authorities in Damascus are seeking to extend their control over all of Syria, after toppling former president Bashar Assad a little over a year ago
PARIS, France: France’s President Emmanuel Macron and the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, in telephone talks on Saturday urged a cessation of fighting in Syria, the French presidency said.
They “called on all parties for an immediate de-escalation and a permanent ceasefire,” it said, after fighting in recent days between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and government troops in the country’s north.
The SDF control swathes of Syria’s oil-rich north and northeast, much of which they captured during the civil war and the battle against the Daesh group.
The Islamist-led authorities in Damascus are seeking to extend their control over all of Syria, after toppling former president Bashar Assad a little over a year ago.
Both sides signed a deal in March last year to merge the semi-autonomous Syrian Kurdish administration and its forces into the new government, but implementation has largely stalled.
Macron and Barzani said they backed “the immediate resumption of talks on integrating the SDF into the Syrian state,” the French presidency added.
