Concerns grow over new Gaza carnage amid planned ruthless Israeli assault on Rafah

News Network

February 8, 2024

Fears have mounted over a new carnage against Palestinians as the Israeli military prepares to conduct an offensive in the overcrowded Gaza city of Rafah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that he had ordered troops to “prepare to operate” in Rafah, home to about 1.4 million Palestinians who have been displaced due to the occupying regime’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said an Israeli assault on Rafah, situated in Gaza’s closed southern border with Egypt, risks “claiming the lives of even more people” and “hampering a humanitarian operation” there.

“As the war encroaches further into Rafah, I am extremely concerned about the safety and well-being of families that have endured the unthinkable in search of safety,” he added.

“Their living conditions are abysmal -- they lack the basic necessities to survive, stalked by hunger, disease and death.”

Similarly, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that if Israel pushed on into Rafah, it would “exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”
“I am especially alarmed by reports that the Israeli military intends to focus next on Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been squeezed in a desperate search for safety,” he said.

Meanwhile, Raed al-Nims of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said, “Everyone is afraid of the expanding of the ground operation in Rafah.”

On Tuesday, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA warned of a “large-scale loss of civilian lives” in the case of an Israeli attack on Rafah.

“Under international humanitarian law, indiscriminate bombing of densely populated areas may amount to war crimes,” OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told a UN briefing in the Swiss city of Geneva.

Israel waged the genocidal war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 27,708 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 67,174 others.

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Level of human costs of Israeli aggression on Lebanon ‘alarming’, warns UN

News Network

November 12,2024

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon has warned that the “picture of life in Lebanon remains grim,” highlighting an "alarming" level of human suffering and significant humanitarian consequences due to the ongoing Israeli carnage.

Imran Riza, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL), provided a stark overview of the Arab country's dire circumstances in a statement released on Monday.

“The current picture of life in Lebanon remains grim. Yesterday, airstrikes reportedly killed 23 people, including seven children, in the village of Aalmat in Mount Lebanon,” Riza said on X.

An airstrike in the city of Tyre on the same day resulted in the tragic deaths of five siblings from a single family, all of whom had special needs, according to his statement.

He added that in the last week, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 241 individuals and left 642 others injured in Lebanon, as reported by the Ministry of Health.

“In the past month, more than 185,000 people have fled their homes in their search for safety within the country, bringing the total to over 870,000 people internally displaced,” Riza said

The UN official highlighted that numerous individuals, including the elderly and those with health issues, are staying behind while witnessing the ruins of their ancestral homes.

He urged for the swift safeguarding of civilian people and infrastructure, emphasizing the necessity to uphold international humanitarian law and end the ongoing violence.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli forces bombed a house in the town of Maydoun in Bekaa on Monday night, killing three people and destroying the house.

Earlier, Israel bombed the northern town of Ain Yaaqoub, killing at least 14 people.

The killings came as Israeli military continued to pound Lebanon, bombing shops selling electrical appliances in the southern city of Tyre and carrying out air raids on the towns of Shamshtar in eastern Baalbek and Roumine in southern Nabatieh.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks killed at least 54 people across the country on Monday.

Israel’s merciless attacks continue despite calls from the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and directives from the International Court of Justice urging measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and Lebanon.

In Lebanon, at least 3,243 people have been killed and 14,134 others wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.

The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah opened a support front for Palestinians in Gaza only a day after the Israeli regime unleashed its genocidal war on the besieged territory.

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