GENEVA: The head of the international Red Cross on Saturday denounced Israel’s plans for a mass evacuation of Gaza City ahead of a military takeover, insisting there was no way it could be done safely.
“It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe and dignified under the current conditions,” International Committee of the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric said in a statement.
“Such an evacuation would trigger a massive population movement that no area in the Gaza Strip can absorb, given the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and the extreme shortages of food, water, shelter and medical care,” she warned.
Her comments came after Israel’s military on Friday declared Gaza City “a dangerous combat zone,” as it prepared to conquer the occupied Palestinian territory’s largest city after almost two years of war.
The Israeli military did not call for the population to evacuate immediately but the army’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, said on Wednesday that the city’s evacuation was “inevitable.”
Israel is under mounting pressure at home and abroad to end its devastating offensive in Gaza, where the vast majority of the population has been displaced at least once and the United Nations has declared a famine.
The UN estimates that nearly a million people currently live in Gaza governorate, which includes Gaza City and its surroundings in the north of the territory.
Any evacuation order “would be imposed on civilians who are already traumatized by months of fighting and terrified by what could come next,” Spoljaric said.
“Many are unable to comply with evacuation orders because they are starving, sick, injured or suffering from physical disabilities,” she pointed out, stressing that “all civilians are protected by international humanitarian law (IHL), whether they leave or stay behind, and must be allowed to return home.”
Spoljaric highlighted that “IHL requires that when evacuation orders are issued, Israel must do everything to ensure that civilians have satisfactory conditions of shelter, hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that families are not separated.”
“These conditions cannot currently be met in Gaza,” she said.
“This makes any evacuation not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances.”
The ICRC president reiterated the call for an immediate ceasefire, a mass-influx of aid and for Palestinian group Hamas to release its remaining Israeli hostages.
“Any further escalation of the conflict will only lead to more death, destruction and displacement,” she said.
Red Cross chief says mass evacuation of Gaza City ‘impossible’
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Red Cross chief says mass evacuation of Gaza City ‘impossible’
- “It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe,” the Red Cross says
Landmine explosion in Sudan kills 9, including 3 children
- “Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said
KHARTOUM: A land mine explosion killed nine people in Sudan on Sunday, including three children, as they were riding in an auto-rickshaw along a road in the frontline region of Kordofan, a medical source told AFP.
The war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023, has left Sudan strewn with mines and unexploded ordnance, though the explosive that caused Sunday’s deaths could also have dated back to previous rebellions that have shaken South Kordofan state since 2011.
“Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said.
The vehicle was reduced to “a metal carcass,” witness Abdelbagi Issa told AFP by phone.
“We were walking behind the tuk-tuk along the road to the market when we heard the sound of an explosion,” he said. “People fell to the ground and the tuk-tuk was destroyed.”
Kordofan has become the center of fighting in the nearly three-year war ever since the RSF forced the army out of its last foothold in the neighboring Darfur region late last year.
Since it broke out, Sudan’s civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 11 million to flee their homes, triggering a dire humanitarian crisis.
It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, center and east while the RSF and its allies control the west and parts of the south.
