At least 35 killed in Israeli strikes on Rafah as vital aid corridors cut off
Nearly three dozen Palestinian civilians, including women and children, have been killed as Israeli military forces bombed various neighborhoods in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah.
Medical sources at Kuwait Specialized Hospital in Rafah, located 30 kilometers (19 miles) southwest of Gaza City, said 35 people were killed and 129 others injured as a result of the Israeli offensives in the last 24 hours.
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA, citing medical sources, also reported that seven Palestinian citizens, including children, were killed in the early hours of Wednesday in an Israeli bombing of al-Zaytoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City. Several others were injured as well.
Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israeli warplanes targeted an apartment in a residential building near al-Falah School in the Asqoula area of al-Zaytoun neighborhood, killing a man, his wife and their children.
The sources added that rescue workers were able to retrieve the killed civilians and those injured, and transported them to the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has warned of disruptions in aid delivery and fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing bordering Egypt.
UNRWA said in a press statement that the continued disruption of aid and fuel supplies through the Rafah crossing would halt humanitarian response throughout the Gaza Strip.
It noted that the famine would worsen, especially in the northern Gaza Strip, if supplies are cut off.
Additionally, the General Authority for Borders and Crossings in Gaza said in a brief statement that operations at the Rafah land crossing were suspended following the entry of Israeli tanks into the crossing facilities from Palestinian territory.
Passenger movement from Gaza has ceased, and the entry of humanitarian and relief aid into the territory has been halted, it added.
The director general of the Government Media Office in Gaza, Ismail al-Thawabta, said the occupation of the Rafah land crossing by Israeli forces constitutes a real catastrophe amid complete international silence, stressing that the measure has cut off the only lifeline to Gaza in light of the travel ban on ordinary people, the wounded and patients who have been trapped in the Gaza Strip since the start of the genocidal war.
Thawabta continued that Israeli troops have also closed the Kerem Shalom border crossing, which has resulted in the stoppage of humanitarian aid deliveries into the Gaza Strip, and further deterioration of humanitarian crisis there.
Israel unleashed its war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed 34,789 Palestinians and injured 78,204 others.
About 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, once designated a “safe zone” by the Israeli military. Palestinians are now struggling to evacuate the city, after the Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering them to leave as a large-scale assault on the city is planned.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said that a ground invasion of Rafah would be “intolerable” and called on Israel and Hamas “to go an extra mile” to reach a truce deal.
“This is an opportunity that cannot be missed, and a ground invasion in Rafah would be intolerable because of its devastating humanitarian consequences, and because of its destabilizing impact in the region,” Guterres told reporters on Monday ahead of a meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in New York.
