'Fear and trepidation' as 100,000 people flee Rafah bombardment

Israel steps up strikes, with PM vowing to ‘fi ght with our fi ngernails’

- Jason Burke , Malak A Tantesh

More than 100,000 people have fled Rafah after Israel intensified its bombardment, UN officials said yesterday, in the largest movement of the population in Gaza for many months.

Humanitarian officials are tracking the number of people fleeing Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where more than 1 million Palestinians displaced from elsewhere in the territory have been sheltering.

The number is expected to rise, with deep concern among aid officials yesterday that the newly displaced people will end up in makeshift encampments without any services, living in the rubble of their former homes without "basic essentials necessary for life".

The attempts to evacuate came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed Israel would stand alone and "fight with our fingernails" in defiance of US warnings not to proceed with a ground invasion in Rafah, and as Israeli and Hamas delegations left ceasefire talks in Cairo.

One UN official in Rafah said: "There is a lot of fear and trepidation. The roads are very congested with cars, donkey carts, trolleys, 12 → pickup trucks and people walking. Some have already been displaced multiple times and are trying to take material for shelter with them, which isn't easy; others are moving for the first time.

"We could be talking about 300,000 within a few days. The problem is there is basically nowhere where that number of people can go which is safe and equipped to provide basic essentials necessary for life."

With no aid stockpiles after seven months of war, and supplies into southern parts of Gaza cut off after Israel's seizure of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing on Tuesday, there was "not a lot❞ agencies could do to help, another official said.