Tel Aviv [Israel] : As many as 50,000 Palestinians have moved from northern to southern Gaza through the humanitarian corridors set up the Israel, the UN Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has announced, The Times of Israel reported.
Palestinians have been able to evacuate northern Gaza due to a formalized humanitarian pause in the fighting that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) implemented in several neighbourhoods in northern Gaza for the first time after pressure from the Biden administration.
It was the sixth consecutive day in which the IDF permitted people to flee northern Gaza and move south through the Salah a Din humanitarian corridor, with 50,000 evacuating in the course of seven hours, The Times of Israel reported.
In its daily update, OCHA said, “Hundreds of thousands of people remaining in the north [of Gaza] are struggling to secure the minimum amounts of water and food to survive.”
The UN office said 65 trucks of humanitarian aid arrived in Gaza on Thursday after two days in a row in which the number was closer to the initial US goal of 100. The OCHA has termed Thursday’s figure “wholly inadequate.”
According to OCHA, an unconfirmed number of foreign nationals evacuated Gaza through Egypt’s Rafah crossing along with a handful of injured people who will undergo treatment on the other side of the border.
According to OCHA, all municipal water wells shut down on Thursday due to a lack of fuel, after several days of limited operation. Following this, trucking and pumping of brackish water for non-drinking domestic uses stopped, according to The Times of Israel report.
One of the two desalination plants in southern Gaza shut down due to a lack of fuel, while the other operated at roughly five per cent capacity. As of Thursday, no bakeries were active as they had no fuel, water, wheat flour and damage caused to many due to the fighting. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the death toll in Gaza has reached 10,818.
Israel has agreed to formalize localized pauses in the IDF’s fighting in Gaza for the first time since its counter-offensive against Hamas began, The Times of Israel reported citing a senior Israeli official.
A senior Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity said, the “tactical, localized” pauses that Israel agreed on Thursday to implement each day will build on the humanitarian corridor that it started operating on Sunday to allow Gazans to evacuate from northern to southern Gaza, away from the most intense regions of fighting.
Since Sunday, the IDF has been holding fire along the humanitarian corridor on most days for four to six hours to allow the people of Gaza to evacuate south. It also agreed to humanitarian pauses on October 20 and 22 in order to allow for the safe passage of two pairs of hostages that were released by Hamas.
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel has agreed to implement pauses in specific parts of northern Gaza to allow Palestinian civilians to evacuate, The Times of Israel reported.
Speaking to Fox News, Netanyahu said, “[The army] is fighting the terrorists both above ground and below ground,” Netanyahu told Baier. “We’re doing everything in our power to reduce civilian casualties: We’ve managed safe zones and safe corridors so civilians can hear our call to leave, even though Hamas is trying to keep them in Netanyahu continued to avoid using the term “humanitarian pause” which has been used by the Biden administration, The Times of Israel reported. He said that Israel will not agree to a more long-term ceasefire until the hostages are released. The more formalized pauses were first announced during White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby’s phone briefing with reporters.
