Israel orders new evacuations from Rafah, apparently preparing for ground assault
About 300,000 civilians so far have moved toward al-Mawasi, according to Israeli military estimates released Saturday.
Some 110,000 people had fled Rafah as of Friday, amid fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, along with Israeli bombardments that have increased in and around the city, the United Nations said.
Many of these displaced people are among the 1 million refugees from other parts of the Gaza Strip who had previously found shelter in Rafah.
"They threw fliers on Rafah and said, from Rafah to al-Zawayda is safe, people should evacuate there, and they did, and what has become of them? Dismembered bodies? There is no safe place in Gaza," said Khitam Al-Khatib, a civilian in the area who told Reuters she had lost at least 10 of her relatives in an airstrike on a family house earlier Saturday.
Al-Zawayda is a small town in central Gaza that has been crowded by thousands of displaced people from across the enclave.
Despite heavy U.S. pressure against Israel’s impending military offensive and fears by residents and humanitarian groups, Israel has said it will advance into Rafah to weed out thousands of Hamas fighters it believes are hiding there.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel cannot defeat Hamas and eliminate any possibility of the militant group repeating its October 7 terror attack without sending ground troops into Rafah in search of them.
Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing Rafah's eastern and western sections Friday, effectively encircling the eastern side, a move that has prompted Washington to hold up the delivery of some military aid to its ally, including 3,500 bombs.
At least 37 Palestinians, 24 of them from central Gaza areas, were killed in overnight airstrikes across the area, including in Rafah, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry.
The United Nations has warned that if Israel attacked Rafah, which borders Egypt near the main aid entry points, it would cripple humanitarian operations and result in a disastrous surge of civilian casualties.
At a news briefing earlier Friday, the head of the U.N. Gaza Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, Georgios Petropoulos, said all crossings into the Rafah area in southern Gaza are closed, preventing movement of supplies, humanitarian staff or any civilians needing to evacuate. He said even if the Rafah crossing was open, the nearby fighting would make it too dangerous to use.
The OCHA chief said unless there is a solution quickly, humanitarian activities will come to a halt in Gaza "within the next two days."
Hamas hostages
Hamas said Saturday that another one of the hostages abducted during its October 7 assault on Israel has died.
Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the U.K. and other Western countries, released a video saying that 51-year-old hostage Nadav Popplewell died after being wounded in an Israeli strike in Gaza. The validity of the claim could not be verified.
Popplewell was abducted by Hamas militants from the southern Israeli community of Kibbutz Nirim.
The Israeli military did not comment on the latest video but has called previous Hamas hostage videos psychological terror. It has also denied some of the previous accusations by Hamas that hostages were killed by Israeli fire.
Cease-fire talks brokered by Qatar and Egypt are back to square one, Hamas said Friday, accusing Israel of rejecting a truce proposal written by the mediators.
Negotiators for Israel and Hamas left Cairo late Thursday, ending the latest round of indirect negotiations.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on Friday called the development "deeply regrettable." The United States, Qatar and Egypt were mediating the talks.
Mass grave probe
The U.N. Security Council called Friday for an immediate independent investigation into mass graves allegedly containing hundreds of bodies near hospitals in Gaza.
Members of the council expressed in a statement their "deep concern over reports of the discovery of mass graves, in and around the Nasser and Shifa medical facilities in Gaza, where several hundred bodies, including women, children and older persons, were buried."
They stressed the need for accountability for any violations of international law and urged that investigators be given "unimpeded access to all locations of mass graves in Gaza to conduct immediate, independent, thorough, comprehensive, transparent and impartial investigations."
Israel has repeatedly struck hospitals in Gaza since the beginning of its military operation in the enclave, which was prompted by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli residential communities and a music festival.
Israel has accused Hamas of using the medical facilities as command centers and, in some instances, as places where it held hostages abducted during the October 7 attack.
The Israeli army has said about 200 Palestinians were killed during its military operations there.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that 34,654 Palestinians have been killed and 77,908 injured since Israel's military offensive on Gaza began.
This report includes information from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.