Residents said tanks, which had moved in to take control of the crossing, had not entered built-up areas of the city and gun battles were still outside the city limits.
As battles raged on the outskirts of Rafah on Wednesday with Israeli forces closing in, Palestinians were on the move again, abandoning neighbourhoods of the southern Gaza city and leaving them as ghost towns.
Israeli forces tasked with destroying the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, on Tuesday seized the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in Rafah, cutting off a vital route for aid into the enclave, where malnutrition is widespread.Israel’s military said it was conducting a limited operation in Rafah to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which runs Gaza. It told civilians to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” some 20 km away.
“We don’t fear death and martyrdom but we have kids to care for and live for another day when this war ends and we rebuild the city,” he told Reuters via a chat app.Juliette Touma, director of communications of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, estimated that around 10,000 Palestinians have left Rafah since Monday.
The Israeli army has ordered tens of thousands of people to evacuate Rafah as it conducts a ground operation there.Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli forces in the east of Rafah. Lines of smoke from air strikes and tank shelling rose from places east of the city, residents said. “Sixty-five families or 400 people are now homeless. People have no money, no tents, no one to support them,” he said.“This is the third or fourth time we have had to move. We are eight families. We live in fear. There is no safe place in the entire strip,” he said.The main maternity hospital in Rafah has stopped admitting patients, the United Nations Population Fund told Reuters on Wednesday.
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