The United Nations food agency is unable to feed most civilians in Rafah, its local director warned Friday, with most border crossings closed amid what he described as “apocalyptic conditions” and the Israeli military pushing further into Gaza’s southernmost city.
The World Food Programme is currently serving only 27,000 people in Rafah, according to Matthew Hollingworth, the organization’s country director in Gaza. That’s a tiny fraction of the roughly one million Gazans who have been displaced from the area. “The sounds, the smells, the everyday life are horrific and apocalyptic,” Hollingworth told journalists Friday after returning from a trip to Gaza.
“IDF troops in central Rafah located Hamas rocket launchers, terror tunnel shafts, and weapons. The troops also dismantled a Hamas weapons storage facility in the area,” the IDF said in the statement. On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had established “operational control” over the Philadelphi Corridor, a 14-kilometer buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the Egypt-Gaza border.
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