Red Cross Warns Against Evacuation Of Gaza City

(MENAFN- Gulf Times) AFP Gaza Strip The Red Cross warned Saturday that any Israeli attempt to evacuate Gaza City would put residents at risk, as Israel's military tightened its siege on the area ahead of a planned offensive.
Gaza's civil defence agency said that since dawn Israeli attacks had killed 61 people in the territory already devastated by nearly 23 months of war.
"It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe and dignified under the current conditions," International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric said in a statement. The dire state of shelter, healthcare and nutrition in Gaza meant evacuation was "not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances".
Israel is under increasing pressure to end its offensive in Gaza where the great majority of the population has been displaced at least once and the United Nations has declared a famine. But despite the calls at home and abroad for an end to the war, the Israeli army is readying itself for an operation to seize the Palestinian territory's largest city and relocate its inhabitants.
The Israeli military has declared Gaza City a "dangerous combat zone", without the daily pauses in fighting that have allowed limited food deliveries elsewhere. The military did not call for the population to leave immediately, but a day earlier COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said it was making preparations "for moving the population southward for their protection".
Gaza's civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP 57 people had been killed in Israeli bombing since dawn. The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the figure. Bassal said 12 people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit "a number of displaced people's tents" near a mosque in the al-Nasr area, west of Gaza City.
Umm Imad Kaheel, who was nearby at the time, said children were among those killed in the strike, which had "shaken the earth". "People were screaming and panicking, everyone running, trying to save the injured and retrieve the martyrs lying on the ground," the 36-year-old said.
The civil defence agency said 12 people were killed by Israeli fire as they waited near food distribution centres in the north, south and centre. A journalist working for AFP on the northern edge of Gaza City reported he had been ordered to evacuate by the army, adding conditions had become increasingly difficult, with gunfire and explosions nearby. Abu Mohammed Kishko, a resident of the city's Zeitoun neighbourhood, told AFP the bombardments the previous night had been "insane".
"It didn't stop for a second, and we didn't sleep all night," the 42-year-old said Cross siege UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini

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