NEW YORK, (PIC)
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Sunday that reports of Israel’s plans to evacuate Palestinians from the Rafah area in the southern Gaza Strip to expand its ground offensive are “extremely worrying.”
In a press statement, Ghebreyesus added, “This plan has devastating consequences for more than 1.4 million Palestinians who have nowhere else left to go, and who have almost no place left to seek health care.”
He explained, “All hospitals in Rafah are overwhelmed and overflowing. In the rest of the Strip the majority of hospitals are either functioning minimally or non-functional at all,” calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Earlier on Monday, the Executive Director of UNICEF, Catherine Russell, called for “the protection of about 1.3 million Palestinians in Rafah, the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip”, noting that “this border city with Egypt has turned into one of the most densely populated places on Earth.”
She elaborated that “Rafah is overcrowded with children and families, including those who have been displaced several times due to the ongoing Israeli bloody aggression against Gaza.”
Since October 7, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip, leading to the killing of 28,176 citizens and the injury of 67,784 others, in addition to the displacement of more than 85 percent (about 1.9 million people) of the Strip’s population, according to official sources in Gaza and international bodies and organizations.
