Palestinians in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp have been left to search through the rubble, trying to retrieve their belongings after the Israeli military withdrew from the area following a three-week operation.
Gaza’s largest refugee camp, once home to more than 100,000 people, has been all but destroyed in an IDF mission to root out Hamas cells.
The health ministry in Gaza says 53 Palestinians were killed and 357 others wounded in fighting across the strip in the past 24 hours.
The ministry says the total death toll in Gaza since 7 October now stands at 36,224, although officials don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Aid was airdropped into Gaza again on Thursday, with people rushing to landing areas to try to access food and other supplies.
At a press conference in New York, the UN Secretary General’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said he had several humanitarian updates, “none of them good”.
“Intensifying hostilities and severe access constraints continue to impede aid operations in Gaza at a time when hundreds of thousands of people need life-saving aid,” he said.
“Humanitarian workers face movement restrictions, including to border areas and repeated denials of access and delays.”
But the Biden administration insists that Israel’s military action in Rafah is not the major operation officials have been threatening for weeks.
“We have been clear about what this isn’t, which is not a major military operation. I’m not going to categorise it, into one box or another. This is obviously a very dynamic and fluid situation. We’re going to continue to consult with our partners in Israel and engage on these issues,” said State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel.
Meanwhile, families continue to stream out of Rafah in search of safer areas elsewhere in the enclave. The UN estimates that around 900,000 people have fled the city since the start of Israel’s ‘limited’ military operation.
