Israeli soldiers stand on a tank near the border with the Gaza Strip.
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Hostilities continue in Rafah and southern Gaza despite the Israeli military’s announcement on Sunday of tactical pauses in operations to allow humanitarian aid to enter, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Oslo on June 17.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on June 16 criticized plans announced by the military to hold daily pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into the Palestinian enclave.

Mr. Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, the main organisation delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, said that there had been no pause in the fighting.

“There has been information that such a decision has been taken, but the political level says none of this decision has been taken,” Mr. Lazzarini told a press conference.

“So for the time being, I can tell you that hostilities continue in Rafah and the south of Gaza. And that operationally, nothing has changed yet.”

The Israeli military said on June 17 its forces were continuing focused, intelligence-based operations in the Rafah area, which included close combat with militants and seizure and destruction of weapons.

The military had announced at the weekend the daily pauses from 0500 GMT until 1600 GMT in the area from the Kerem Shalom Crossing, in southern Israel, to the Salah al-Din Road and then northwards. It later clarified that normal operations would continue in Rafah, the main focus of its operation in southern Gaza.

Meanwhile, residents said Israeli forces were advancing deeper into the central and western areas of Rafah under heavy fire from the ground and the air on June 17

Armed groups led by Hamas were fighting from close range inside the Al-Shaboura camp in the heart of Rafah, according to militants and residents, who reported hearing sounds of non-stop explosions and gunfire.

Mr. Lazzarini later told Reuters that UNRWA received a notification from the Israeli military that there would be a pause, but that it was in English only, not in any other language and was soon followed by the government contradicting that instruction.

“For the time being, I see nothing which would qualify to the definition of a pause,” he said.

Jerusalem:

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said Sunday that Israeli authorities had barred him from entering Gaza for a second time since the Israel-Hamas war started on October 7.

“Just this week, they have denied — for the second time — my entry to Gaza where I planned to be with our UNRWA colleagues including those on the front lines,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Lazzarini has been to Gaza four times since the war broke out including on March 17.

“The Israeli authorities continue to deny humanitarian access to the United Nations,” he said on Sunday.

“Only in the past two weeks, we have recorded 10 incidents involving shooting at convoys, arrests of UN staff including bullying, stripping them naked, threats with arms & long delays at checkpoints forcing convoys to move during the dark or abort,” Lazzarini said.

He also called for an “independent investigation” into rocket fire that led to the closure of a key Israel-Gaza aid crossing.

Hamas’s armed wing, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the Sunday launch, saying militants had targeted Israeli troops in the area of Kerem Shalom crossing.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Cairo:

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Monday Israel had blocked him from entering the war-torn and besieged Gaza Strip where the UN has warned of impending famine.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said he had “intended to go into Rafah today, but was informed my entry had been declined,” speaking in a Cairo joint press conference with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

Lazzarini later wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he had been denied entry by “Israeli authorities”, a claim Israel did not immediately comment on.

The UN agency, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has been in crisis since Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of being involved in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

This led multiple donor nations including the United States to suspend funding although some of them have since resumed or increased it including Spain, Canada and Australia.

Israeli authorities did not respond to an AFP request for comment, but government spokesman Avi Hyman earlier Monday reiterated what he called Israel’s position, that “UNRWA is a front for Hamas”.

Shoukry expressed Cairo’s “complete support” for the agency and criticised “unilateral actions to restrict UNRWA funding due to baseless accusations”.

The Hamas attack of October 7 resulted in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Hamas-controlled Gaza has killed at least 31,726 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

‘Man-made starvation’

Among the dead are 168 UNRWA employees, according to the agency’s latest figures.

Lazzarini on Monday said the UN has paid a “massive price in Gaza”.

“More than 150 of our facilities have been completely destroyed in the Gaza Strip,” he said.

“And a number of our staff were arrested and endured ill-treatment and humiliation during investigation.”

In more than five months of war and siege, the humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated to what the UN has repeatedly warned is an imminent famine.

“This is man-made starvation,” Lazzarini said.

The Gaza health ministry has in recent weeks recorded at least 27 deaths from malnutrition and dehydration, most of them children.

The UN said Monday that half of the territory’s 2.4 million people are experiencing “catastrophic hunger and starvation”.

Humanitarian aid operations have intensified in recent weeks, including airdrops and efforts for a maritime humanitarian corridor from Cyprus, but UN and other aid agencies warn that these are insufficient to meet the desperate needs in Gaza.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)