1 million people have fled Rafah in recent weeks: UNRWA

About a million people have fled Rafah in recent weeks, the United Nations refugee agency helping Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said Tuesday as Israel steps up its attacks on the southern Gaza city.

The city was believed to be sheltering more than a million Palestinians who had fled south as the conflict between Israel and Hamas intensified in Gaza. 

UNRWA said the movement of Palestinians “happened with nowhere safe to go and amidst bombardments, lack of food and water, piles of waste and unsuitable living conditions.”

The agency added that supplying aid for those in the city is now nearly “impossible,” citing the rising fighting and logistical concerns. Palestinian refugees in Gaza are now “facing an unprecedented health emergency,” the organization said in its annual report, also released Tuesday.

Most of those who have fled have moved to an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” nearby, though aid groups have remarked that the area is undersupplied and overcrowded.

“As we can see, there is nothing ‘humanitarian’ about these areas,” Suze van Meegen, head of operations in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told The Associated Press.

The area has no central kitchen, marketplace or hospitals, with the only medical service coming from small tents. There is also limited access to water and sewage infrastructure.

“It’s just a matter of time before people begin to suffer greatly from food insecurity,” Mercy Corps, a nongovernmental organization focused on providing humanitarian aid, said.

The Israeli military has slowly encroached on Rafah, despite strong warnings from the Biden administration. President Biden warned earlier this month that he would stop military aid shipments to Israel if it invaded Rafah without a plan approved by U.S. leaders to limit civilian casualties.

More than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people were believed to be sheltering in Rafah, and more than 80 percent of the territory’s population overall are displaced from their homes. The U.N. said famine has begun in parts of the region as civilians struggle to get access to humanitarian aid.

More than 120 aid trucks entered the city Sunday from Egypt, the first since the Israeli military seized the crossing earlier this month. It was not immediately clear if local aid groups could access the humanitarian supplies, however, per the AP, as fighting in the area has made humanitarian work difficult.

Much of southern Gaza, including Rafah, has been mostly cut off from aid since the Israeli military began what it described as a limited operation into the area early this month. Humanitarian convoys with supplies for aid groups to distribute for free have now fallen to nearly their lowest levels in the war, the U.N. said.

An American-built floating pier has begun to deliver some aid to the area, though aid groups say it is much less than promised and that there are not enough trucks to adequately distribute supplies.