ISRAELI army tanks moved into the centre of Khan Younis city yesterday, targeting housing blocks and public buildings, after a night of non-stop artillery shelling and clashes around Gaza.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, called for urgent international intervention to stop the Israeli occupation’s ‘comprehensive aggression’ against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
In a statement, Abu Rudeineh said Israel is practising ‘organised terrorism’ against the Palestinians in all its locations.
He also held the United States responsible for this escalation and asked it to pressure the Israeli government to stop its war against the Palestinians.
He called on the United Nations Security Council to ‘intervene urgently to stop the shedding of Palestinian blood in light of the unprecedented international silence’.
Palestinians in Gaza are facing ‘utter, deepening horror’ as disease spreads, food is scarce and humanitarian aid is all but cut off, the UN’s human rights chief has warned.
Volker Turk said yesterday that some 1.9 million displaced Palestinians are being forced into smaller and smaller pockets of southern Gaza. The conditions are ‘overcrowded’ and ‘unsanitary’, he said.
‘My humanitarian colleagues have described the situation as apocalyptic,’ Turk added, saying the catastrophe ‘was entirely foreseeable and preventable’.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned that the situation in Gaza is ‘getting worse each minute’.
UNRWA said people fleeing Israeli attacks have nowhere safe to turn, as all shelters are already beyond capacity.
‘Another wave of displacement is underway in Gaza’ UNRWA said, calling the entire Strip ‘one of the most dangerous places in the world.
‘There is nowhere to go as shelters, including UNRWA’s, are overflowing.’
The UN special rapporteur said ‘the massacre of civilians must be stopped’.
