Closing summary
Israeli tanks forged deeper into eastern Rafah on Tuesday, reaching some residential districts of the southern border city where more than a million people had been sheltering. Witnesses reported seeing tanks crossing the strategically important Salah al-Din road into the Brazil and Jneina neighbourhoods. Between 360,000 and 500,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah in the past week after Israeli warnings to evacuate eastern and central neighbourhoods.
A spokesperson for the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, Louise Wateridge, who is in Rafah, wrote in a post on X that families still in the southern city had “moved as far west as possible”, describing inland in the city as a “ghost town”.
The World Court, also known as the international court of justice (ICJ), said it would hold hearings on Thursday and Friday to discuss a request by South Africa seeking new emergency measures over the Rafah incursion, which Qatar says has stalled efforts to reach a ceasefire. South Africa’s demand is part of a case it brought against Israel accusing it of violating the genocide convention in Gaza, and which Israel has called baseless.
Médecins Sans Frontières said that it had been “forced to stop providing healthcare at Rafah Indonesian Field hospital” as of Sunday. “MSF has seen a pattern of systematic attacks against medical facilities and civilian infrastructure since the beginning of the war. In light of this, as well as the advancing offensive, we have made the decision to leave Rafah Indonesian Field hospital,” the medical NGO said. It said the 22 patients who remained at the hospital have been referred to other facilities as MSF can “no longer guarantee their safety”.
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said attacks on aid convoys headed for Gaza were “appalling” and that Israel must hold those responsible to account. The former Conservative prime minister said he would raise his concerns with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government after reports Israeli protesters blocked aid trucks, threw food packages on to the road and ripped open bags of grain. The aid lorries were targeted at the Tarqumiya checkpoint in the West Bank as they came from Jordan on Monday.
One of ActionAid’s partners in Rafah, Wefaq, has paused humanitarian operations there, with the charity warning that aid operations could grind to a “complete halt” as aid workers face an “unprecedented” level of danger making their jobs become “impossible”. The charity says that aid workers in Rafah are “experiencing the same inhumane living conditions as the rest of the population” and that “virtually no aid” has entered Gaza in recent days.
The Biden administration has assessed that Israel has amassed enough troops on the edge of Rafah to move forward with a full-scale incursion on the southern Gazan city over the coming days, CNN reported. The two senior administration officials also told the outlet that US officials are unsure if Israel has made a final decision to carry out the full-scale invasion.
We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Updated
James Smith, a British emergency room doctor volunteering in hospitals in southern Gaza, said he had been told by a World Health Organization official that some emergency fuel had made it into the Gaza Strip, potentially enough for six days.
“Health is still being prioritised over other essential services, so when health looks a bit better it generally means other essential services are struggling,” he told Reuters. “It’s a zero-sum game.”
