Israel strikes on Rafah 'recipe for disaster': UNRWA

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warns that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza's overcrowded border town of Rafah would be a "recipe for disaster."

Four months into Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, the regime’s military forces have now ramped up airstrikes on Gaza's far south, where more than half of the territory's population of 2.4 million has been forcibly displaced.

Israel's warplanes bombed the city overnight on Thursday and Friday. 

At least three children were among eight people killed on Friday morning in the military attacks on homes in Rafah, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. Five of those killed were members of one family.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, said on Friday that an offensive in Rafah would be a “recipe for disaster” given that 1.4 million people had taken refuge there.

“You have 1.4mn people, you have tens of kilometers of people living in the streets in plastic makeshifts ... and you try and figure out a military offensive in the middle of these completely exposed, vulnerable people, it’s a recipe for disaster.”

“Any large-scale military operation among this population can only lead to an additional layer of endless tragedy that's unfolding.”

Genocide in Gaza: Israel intensifies attacks on Rafah

Israeli troops and warplanes bombed areas in Rafah on Thursday. Tanks shelled some areas in the eastern part of the city.

Lazzarini also raised the alarm over the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation in Rafah, after air strikes had hit near UNRWA's base in the area on Thursday.

He said the airstrikes put into doubt the agency's overall relief effort in the besieged territory.

UNRWA operations were "on edge," Lazzarini said. "I don't know how long we will be able to operate in such a high-risk environment."

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X on Friday that an Israeli incursion into Rafah would “exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”

UNICEF, the UN agency for children, also warned that more than 600,000 children and their families have been displaced to Rafah, many of them for multiple times, as a result of Israeli attacks.

“An escalation of the fighting in Rafah, which is already straining under the extraordinary number of people who have been displaced from other parts of Gaza, will mark another devastating turn in a war that has reportedly killed over 27,000 people – most of them women and children,” Catherine Russell, the agency’s executive director, said in a statement on Thursday.

“Military operations in densely populated residential areas can have indiscriminate effects,” she added.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israeli troops would “soon go into Rafah.” He claimed that the regime’s forces would be “providing the civilian population safe passage to safe zones,” in Rafah.

Aid organizations, however, say that such pledges will be nigh-on impossible to fulfill, given the scale of devastation elsewhere in Gaza, and the huge numbers of people trapped in the besieged area.

“There's a sense of growing anxiety and growing panic in Rafah. People have absolutely no idea where to go after Rafah," Lazzarini said.

The regime’s military forces have formerly bombed areas to which they had directed Palestinians to “seek safety.”

Since it started its war on Gaza in early October, 1.9 million people – 85 percent of Gaza’s population – have been internally displaced. The Israeli attacks have also killed almost 28,000 people so far, according to the Gaza health ministry.

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