“Hamas” fighters attacked Kerem Shalom border point again / Article

Mortars were used in the attack today, the armed wing of Hamas announced on the Telegram website.

This is the fourth such attack since Sunday, Israel’s military agency COGAT said on platform X, noting that most humanitarian aid is delivered through this point.

“Hamas will do everything to prevent aid from reaching the people of Gaza,” the agency added.

In recent days, Israeli protesters have again blocked aid convoys seeking to enter the Gaza Strip, claiming the shipments are helping Hamas resist Israeli forces.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people have evacuated from the Gaza city of Rafah in recent days, the United Nations (UN) announced on Friday.

It has already been reported that on Monday the Israeli military called on the residents of Gaza to leave the eastern part of the city and settle in safer places – nearby Hanyounis or Mawasi, flooded with refugees.

In recent weeks, all attention has focused on Rafah, where the population had swelled to around 1.5 million as people fled the war in other areas of the Gaza Strip.

George Petropoulos, head of the Gaza branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the situation in the besieged Palestinian territory has reached an unprecedented level of emergency.

“The recent Israeli government evacuation order linked to the military operation in Rafah has meant that more than 110,000 displaced people have to move north,” Petropoulos told a briefing in Geneva. “Most of these people are people who have already had to move five or six times.”

Countries around the world, including Israel’s main backer the United States, have called on Israel not to extend the ground offensive in Rafah, citing concerns about high civilian casualties.

Hamish Young, the senior emergency coordinator for the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the Gaza Strip, insisted that Rafah must not be invaded and called for an immediate flow of fuel and aid into the Gaza Strip.

“Yesterday I walked through Mawasi, the area where the people of Rafah are being asked to move,” he said. “More than 100,000 people have fled Rafah in the last five days, and the flow of displacement continues. Shelters have already lined the Mavasi sand dunes, and now it is becoming difficult to move between the masses of tents and tarpaulins.”

CONTEXT:

On October 7, 2023, “Hamas” carried out a massacre in Israel, murdering around 1,200 people, the absolute majority of whom were civilians. About 250 more people, including women, children and old people, were taken hostage by the terrorists and taken to the Gaza Strip.

Israel responded with a military operation in the Gaza Strip, and also increased its presence in the West Bank, promising to destroy the terrorist group Hamas.

So far, more than 33,000 people, mostly women and children, have died in the Gaza Strip, according to data from the Hamas-run Health Ministry, and the UN has warned of the growing threat of famine there.

The international community, including a number of Israel’s allies, have repeatedly pointed out Tel Aviv’s disproportionate response to the terrorist attack, but the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the fight for the elimination of “Hamas” in the Gaza Strip.