The aggression on Rafah puts 50,000 Palestinians at imminent risk

RAFAH  (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The General Directorate of Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip has warned of an imminent risk to the lives of more than 50,000 citizens in the Al-Baraksat area, west of Rafah governorate, after they were besieged by Israeli occupation forces.

It also sounded the alarm on the fate of the Civil Defense crews who were besieged on Sunday morning in the same area after they attempted to rescue Red Crescent crews, with whom contact was lost and a number of them were injured by violent Israeli shelling on the area since this morning. The Civil Defense called on the Red Cross and international organizations to assume their responsibilities to protect the besieged citizens and crews.

In the same context, hundreds of citizens were again displaced from Al-Sultan neighborhood, west of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, crossing long distances on foot under heavy Israeli bombardment, after the Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets this morning ordering the residents to leave the area under the pretext of being a “dangerous combat zone”.

For its part, the Rafah Municipality in the southern Gaza Strip said that it receives continuous distress calls from citizens trapped inside their homes in light of the ongoing military escalation, explaining that the city’s residents are suffering from heavy shelling, while medical and civil defense crews are blocked from reaching the wounded and injured, which prevented evacuating them and providing necessary aid to them.

In a statement on Sunday, Rafah Municipality emphasized that the humanitarian situation in the city is deteriorating alarmingly and that the occupation army is forcing thousands of families to flee on foot during the fasting month of Ramadan, leaving them homeless after they were forced to leave their belongings and necessities behind, while rushing to save their lives.

Israel has resumed its genocidal aggression on Gaza since the dawn of March 18, killing more than 670 Palestinians and wounding 1,132 others, mostly women and children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.