Forced displacement pushes one million people to flee Rafah

Gaza (Union)

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced yesterday that forced displacement forced more than one million people to flee the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
Relief organizations reported that about a million Palestinians were living in the small city located on the southern tip of Gaza after fleeing Israeli attacks in other parts of the Strip.
UNRWA said that thousands of families have now resorted to living in damaged and destroyed facilities in the city of Khan Yunis, where the agency provides basic services despite the increasing challenges. She added, “The circumstances cannot be described.” In this context, a UN official announced yesterday that Israeli military activities since May 6 have led to the paralysis of the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip.
In describing the reasons that led to the obstruction of the humanitarian response in Gaza, the Director of Communication and Media at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Juliet Touma, said that they “include restrictions imposed on our movement, including bringing humanitarian supplies from the Kerem Shalom crossing, and not The Israeli authorities granted sufficient permits for our teams to move, and the area surrounding Kerem Shalom became very dangerous very quickly.”
In another context, about 55% of buildings, most of them residential, in the Gaza Strip were damaged or destroyed, according to what the United Nations announced yesterday, based on images taken by satellites.
The United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT) stated that “a total of 137,297 buildings, or approximately 55% of the buildings in Gaza, were affected.”
This estimate was based on a comparison between satellite images taken on May 3 with other images collected since May 2023, October 15 inclusive, that is, a week after the outbreak of war. The center explained, “Based on our analysis, we identified 36,591 destroyed buildings, 16,513 severely damaged buildings, 47,368 moderately damaged buildings, and 36,825 buildings that were likely damaged.”
The analysis, which was published on May 31, added that almost all of these buildings were residential, 135,142. The damage was concentrated in the Deir al-Balah and Gaza governorates, compared to an analysis conducted on April 1.
Since then, 2,613 new buildings have been damaged in Deir al-Balah Governorate and 2,368 in Gaza Governorate, according to UNOSAT. In total, the largest number of newly damaged buildings, 1,216, since the analysis of early April, was recorded in the Nuseirat municipality in Deir al-Balah governorate.
An analysis conducted by researchers in the United States reached very similar results.
An analysis by Corey Scheer and Jamon van den Hoek of satellite images showed that 56.9% of buildings in the Gaza Strip, a total of 160,000 buildings, were damaged or destroyed by April 21.