Overcrowding in Rafah as displaced Palestinians seek shelter: UN
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Gaza: The United Nations on Saturday said that tens of thousands of Palestinians flocking into Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip, are facing overcrowding and need shelters.
Most of them came from the neighbouring Khan Younis city, following evacuation orders issued by Israeli forces and the continued bombing and fighting, Xinhua news agency reported quoting the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as saying.
Those newly displaced people face severe overcrowding in Rafah, with no space for shelter, not even in the streets or other open areas.
"Thousands of displaced people set up temporary structures and tents in a Qatari Field hospital under construction and the Al-Quds Open University campus in Rafah," the agency added.
For many Palestinians, this is the second or third displacement they have experienced since the start of Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip on October 7.
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According to the UN, it is estimated that about 1.9 million people in Gaza, or approximately 85 per cent of the population, are internally displaced.
Nearly 1.2 million of these displaced people have been registered in 151 facilities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) throughout the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza Ministry of Health on Saturday also said that the Israel army was not allowing the wounded Palestinians to be taken to hospitals.
Ashraf Al Qedra, spokesman of the Ministry of Health said that the Israeli forces were preventing the arrival of ambulances to evacuate the wounded and martyrs from the areas where its military forces are present, and the wounded are bleeding to death.
He said that IDF was committing massacres and genocide of entire families in schools and residential neighbourhoods.
The statement said that only 313 bodies of the deceased and only 558 injured people reached hospitals during the past hours and a large number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads.
The Gaza Ministry of Health in the statement called on international bodies to provide urgent field hospitals to northern Gaza and requested the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization to take immediate action to release health personnel detained by the Israeli occupation forces.
Since October 7, Israel has been launching massive airstrikes and a ground offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on Israel. The death toll from the Israeli aggression has risen to 17,487, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
With agency inputs
