UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations said on Monday it had been forced to halt its humanitarian operations in Gaza due to a new Israeli evacuation order for the Deir al-Balah area, a senior UN official said.
“We are not operating today. As of this morning, we’re not operating in Gaza,” the official said, adding that since the start Israeli aggression in Gaza the UN has sometimes had to “delay or take a pause.”
“This is not a decision that we’re saying we’re stopping to operate, but practically we cannot operate,” the official said.
According to the official, the UN “had relocated most of our personnel in our operations” to Deir al-Balah following a Rafah evacuation order several months ago.
250,000 in southern Gaza hit by Israel’s new evacuation order: UN
The Israeli military said on Monday it was targeting “terror operatives” in Deir al-Balah and working to dismantle the “remaining terrorist infrastructure” of Hamas, whose October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the ongoing Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military had told people Sunday to “evacuate immediately.”
“We need to find solutions,” the UN official said. “And if it means that we need to anchor down for 24-48 hours and reset, we do that. But we’re not leaving.
“Right now the challenge is to find a place where we can reset and effectively operate.”
Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,435 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Palestinians flee after new Israeli evacuation orders
Israel issued new evacuation orders for Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip late on Sunday, forcing more families to flee, saying its forces intended to act against Hamas and others operating in the area.
In recent days, Israel has issued several evacuation orders across Gaza, the most since the beginning of the 10-month Israeli aggression, prompting an outcry from Palestinians, the United Nations and relief officials over the reduction of humanitarian zones and the absence of safe areas.
The Deir Al-Balah municipality says Israeli evacuation orders have so far displaced 250,000 people.
1.9 million now displaced in Gaza: UN humanitarian coordinator
In a statement posted on X, the Israeli military urged residents in certain zones to move immediately to the west, as the area they are in is “considered a dangerous combat zone”.
Israeli military strikes killed at least seven Palestinians on Monday, medics said. Two were killed in Deir Al-Balah, where around a million people were sheltering, two at a school in the Al-Nuseirat camp and three in the southern city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
Later on Monday, an Israeli strike on a tent on the coast in Gaza City killed six Palestinians and wounded several other people, medics told Reuters.
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