Many flee as Israel seizes Rafah in new Gaza ‘security zone’

Hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans on Thursday sought shelter in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah, part of a newly announced security zone they intend to seize.

Israeli forces, a day after declaring their intention to capture large swathes of the crowded enclave, pushed into the city on Gaza’s southern edge which had served as a last refuge for people fleeing other areas for much of the war.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, no fewer than 97 people were killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, including at least 20 killed in an airstrike around dawn in the Shejaia suburb of Gaza City.

The assault to capture Rafah is said to be a major escalation in the war, which Israel restarted last month after effectively abandoning a ceasefire in place since January.

Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu said troops were taking an area he called the “Morag Axis”, a reference to an abandoned former Israeli settlement once located between Rafah on Gaza’s southern edge and the adjacent main southern city Khan Younis.

Gazans who had returned homes in the ruins during the ceasefire have now been ordered to flee communities on the northern and southern edges of the strip.

Since the first phase of the ceasefire expired at the start of March with no agreement to prolong it, Israel has imposed a total blockade on all goods reaching Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, recreating what international organisations describe as a humanitarian catastrophe after weeks of relative calm.

Israel’s stated goal since the start of the war has been the destruction of the Hamas militant group which ran Gaza for nearly two decades and led the attack on Israeli communities in October 2023 that precipitated the war.