ADDS FURTHER REMARKS; ADDS ON DECK
By Beyza Binnur Donmez
GENEVA (AA) - The UN humanitarian office on Friday voiced "fear" of possible expansion of the ongoing Israeli military offensive to Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
"We fear that this could get worse for these people,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a briefing in Geneva, while responding to Anadolu’s question.
Rafah is currently hosting over half of the Gaza population that has been displaced by the war and it is also the main route of humanitarian assistance for the 2.2 million in dire need.
"History gives us that cause for concern ," Laerke said, adding: "And without a doubt, (we have) a deep fear for all those Palestinians internally displaced."
He also stressed that the "spirit of the law, which talks about protection of civilians in all conduct of hostilities, that has certainly not been a feature of this crisis."
The spokesman said he did not know if this feature "suddenly" would happen in Rafah in the coming days or weeks.
Underlining that there are already an unimaginably high concentration of people in Rafah and said: "Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair."
He noted that there's "no safe place" in Gaza as well as not in Rafah.
On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on X that Israeli forces in Gaza will "continue to Rafah."
"The Khan Yunis Brigade of the Hamas organization is disbanded, we will complete the mission there and continue to Rafah," Gallant said.
Israel has killed more than 27,000 people in the Gaza Strip in response to the Oct. 7 cross-border offensive by Hamas, which took the lives of 1,200 people and took 240 as hostages. The military onslaught has caused mass displacement and destruction and created conditions for famine.