UNRWA: 300,000 Palestinians Have Fled from Rafah And Jabalia
The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) today said that 150,000 Palestinians have left Rafah in the southern blockaded Gaza Strip where an Israeli invasion is underway despite international outcry.
“Everywhere you look now in west Rafah this morning, families are packing up. Streets are significantly emptier”, Louise Wateridge, a UNRWA spokeswoman, said on X.
“UNRWA estimates 300,000 people have now fled Rafah. New areas have been issued evacuation orders towards central Rafah in south Gaza AND Jabalia in North Gaza,” she added.
The UN agency for Palestine refugees pointed out in a separate post on the X platform that: “At least 300,000 people affected as further areas across GazaStrip receive new evacuation orders today, both towards central Rafah in the south AND Jabalia in north Gaza”.
On Monday, 6 May, Israel declared launching a ground military offensive in Rafah and issued warnings for some 100,000 Palestinians, forcing them to evacuate eastern Rafah.
On the morning of Tuesday, 7 May, the Israeli occupation forces occupied the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing and haled the flow of humanitarian aid into the Strip.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimated population residing in Rafah Governorate as of April 22nd, 2024 is approximately 1.1 million individuals living in an area of 63.1 square kilometers. The population density in Rafah on the eve of the aggression was 4,360 individuals per square kilometer, while it has now reached approximately 17,500 individuals per square kilometer, which constitutes a humanitarian and environmental disaster and puts immense pressure on scarce services and the ability to access the most basic means of life in the midst of the aggression.
This morning the occupation forces expanded their ground and aerial attacks to all districts of the war-torn Strip, and ordered the displacement of Palestinians from vast swaths of the northern Strip and central Rafah as they launched an aggression in the southern portions of Gaza city and the eastern portions of Khan Younes city and conducted a series of airstrikes, resulting in dozens of fatalities and casualties.
It also estimated the population residing in Gaza and North Gaza Governorates was approximately 511,000 and 685,000 in Khan Yunis and the middle of Gaza Strip, taking into account the instability of displacement movement.
Tried before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7, killing at least 34,971 Palestinians and injuring over 78,641 others.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
