110,000 Palestinians forced to escape as heavy combat in Rafah, Gaza

There is a big fight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters near the southern Gaza city of Rafah. This has made it hard for people to get help and more than 110,000 people have had to leave their homes and move north. UN officials shared this information on Friday.

There is a shortage of food and supplies because nothing is getting through the crossings, according to aid agencies.

The World Food Program will have no more food to give out in southern Gaza by Saturday, according to Georgios Petropoulos, a UN official in Rafah. Charities say there won’t be enough fuel soon. This means hospitals will have to close important services, and aid trucks won’t be able to operate in southern and central Gaza.

The United Nations and other groups have been saying for weeks that if Israel attacks Rafah, near the border with Egypt where aid comes in, it will stop aid work and cause a lot of civilians to get hurt. Over 14 million Palestinians, which is half of the people in Gaza, have been staying in Rafah. Many of them left other parts of Gaza to escape Israel’s attacks.

Intense fighting was happening in northern Gaza on Friday. Hamas was fighting back in an area where Israel had attacked before.

Israel didn’t fully invade Rafah as they had planned. The United States strongly disagrees with a big attack and is increasing pressure by saying they won’t give weapons to Israel.

The intense fighting has made the city shake and people are scared that a bigger attack is on the way. There were loud explosions and gunshots all night into Friday in the city, according to an Associated Press reporter.

The UN organization that helps refugees from Palestine, called UNRWA, said that over 110,000 people have left Rafah. Families who have moved a lot during the war are packing up to move again. A woman sat in the back of a truck with her family’s stuff, holding a cat in her arms. They were about to leave.

“The invasion hasn’t started yet, but things are already really bad,” said Raed al-Fayomi, a displaced person in Rafah. “There is no food or water. ”

People who ran away set up new tents in the city of Khan Younis, which was partially destroyed before by an Israeli attack, and the town of Deir al-Balah, making it difficult for the city’s infrastructure to handle.

The Project Hope charity said that their clinic in Deir al-Balah is seeing a lot of people from Rafah who need medical help for injuries from explosions, infections, and pregnancies. “People are leaving with nowhere to go. ” “We don’t have any homes or shelters for people to go to,” said Moses Kondowe, who leads the group’s Gaza team in Rafah.

Petropoulos said the people who help others in need didn’t have the things they needed to start working in new places. “We don’t have tents, blankets or bedding, or any other items that people on the move would normally get from humanitarian aid,” he said.

Israeli soldiers took control of the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt on Tuesday and made it close. Rafah was the main place where fuel came in.

Israel says the main cargo terminal in Gaza, Kerem Shalom crossing, is open and aid convoys are coming in. Trucks with 200,000 liters of fuel were allowed to go through the crossing on Friday.

The UN said it is not safe for workers to go to the crossing in Gaza to get the aid because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli soldiers are fighting with Palestinians in eastern Rafah, which is close to the border crossings. The army found some tunnels and killed the militants in direct fights and airstrikes.

Hamas’s military group said it attacked a house where Israeli soldiers were, as well as a vehicle and soldiers who were walking. The Israeli military did not make any comments.

We cannot confirm the stories from both sides of the battlefield on our own.

Hamas said it fired mortar rounds at soldiers near the Kerem Shalom crossing. The army stopped two missile launches. The crossing was shut down because Hamas attacked nearby soldiers and killed four of them last weekend.

Hamas fired rockets at Beersheeva, a southern city in Israel, on Wednesday. A woman was lightly injured by shrapnel. Israel’s military and rescue services reported this on Friday. The military said that five rockets were aimed at the city. One rocket was stopped and the rest landed in open areas. During the war, fighters in Gaza shot many rockets at Israeli cities and towns. Most of the rockets were stopped, but lately there have been fewer attacks.

Israel says that Rafah is the only place where Hamas is still strong in Gaza. Israel wants to weaken Hamas and bring back the people they captured in a recent attack that started the war.

However, Hamas has continued to come together again, even in the most severely affected areas of Gaza.

Fierce fighting started this week in the Zeitoun area near Gaza City in the north of the territory. Israel attacked the northern part of Gaza first. They had said earlier that they had mostly taken apart Hamas there.

Israeli soldiers keep the north isolated, and the UN says around 300,000 people there are going through a severe food shortage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to continue the Rafah military operation even if we don’t have US weapons. He said “we will fight with everything we have” in a strong statement on Thursday. The US has been sending more weapons to Israel during the war, and the Israeli military has confirmed this.