Interrupting aid supply through Rafah to affect humanitarian response, says UN agency

ANKARA

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Tuesday the interruption to the supply of aid at the Rafah crossing will affect humanitarian response across war-torn Gaza.

The Israeli army early on Tuesday said that its forces have seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

"Continued interruption of the entry of aid and fuel supplies at the Rafah crossing will halt the critical humanitarian response across the Gaza Strip," UNRWA said in a statement.

The "catastrophic hunger faced by people especially in northern Gaza will get much worse if these supply routes are interrupted," the statement added.

The spokesman of the Palestinian border crossing authority confirmed earlier that the border was closed from the Palestinian side.

Video footage shared by Israeli media outlets, including the Times of Israel, showed an Israeli tank at the Rafah crossing.

Following the Palestinian Hamas group announcement of accepting a Qatari-Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, Israel’s war cabinet decided to push ahead with an operation in Rafah.

The Israeli army issued immediate evacuation orders early Monday for Palestinians in the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah and called on them to move to the town of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.

Rafah is home to more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians who have taken refuge from the war launched by Israel following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed nearly 1,200 people.

Since then, the Israeli onslaught has killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, besides causing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Nearly seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January said it is "plausible" that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and ordered Tel Aviv to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians there.