A UN official says Israel’s indiscriminate strikes on the Gaza Strip and incessant evacuation orders have left displaced Palestinians with “no safe place” to go.
Gemma Connell, a UN humanitarian team leader stationed in Gaza for several weeks, reported a lack of space for displaced Palestinians, likening the situation to a “human chess board,” as thousands of people have been displaced more than once.
“People were heading south with mattresses and all of their belongings in vans and in trucks and in cars in order to try and find somewhere safe,” she said during her visit to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
Connell noted that many are left without a clear refuge in Rafah due to the extreme congestion.
“There’s so little space left here in Rafah that people just don’t know where they will go, and it really feels like people being moved around a human chessboard because there’s an evacuation order somewhere.”
“People flee that area into another area. But they’re not safe there,” she said.
The UN official added that Israeli strikes spared no areas in the besieged strip, with strikes hitting even those areas which are not under “an evacuation order”, referring to the tragic death of a nine-year-old boy named Ahmed in al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, which was a supposed safe area.
“He was not in an area under an evacuation order,” Connell said, adding “He was in an area that was supposed to be safe. There is no safe place in Gaza.”
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 20,674 Palestinians and injured more than 54,536 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
