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Heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants on the outskirts of the southern Gaza city of Rafah has left key humanitarian aid points inaccessible and forced more than 110,000 people to flee north, UN officials said on Friday.
With nothing coming through the crossings, food and other supplies are at critical levels, aid agencies said.
The World Food Program will run out of food to distribute in southern Gaza by Saturday, said Georgios Petropoulos, an official from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Rafah.
Aid groups said fuel would also run out soon, forcing hospitals to halt critical operations and stopping trucks bringing aid to southern and central Gaza.
The United Nations and other agencies have warned for weeks that an Israeli assault on Rafah, on the border with Egypt, near the main entry points for aid, would paralyze humanitarian operations and cause a catastrophic spike in civilian casualties.
More than 1.4 million Palestinians – half of Gaza’s population – are sheltering in Rafah, most after fleeing Israeli offensives elsewhere.
Heavy fighting continued Friday in northern Gaza, where Hamas appeared to have regrouped in an area where Israel had already launched punitive attacks.
Israel’s advance on Rafah fell short of the full-scale invasion it had planned. The United States is deeply opposed to a major offensive and is stepping up the pressure by threatening to freeze Israel’s weapons.
But heavy fighting is rocking the city and there are fears that a bigger attack is coming. Artillery and gunfire could be heard throughout the night Friday, an Associated Press reporter in the city said.
The United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, known as UNRWA, said more than 110,000 people have fled Rafah.
Families who had already moved several times during the war packed up to go again. A woman held a cat in her arms as she sat in the back of a truck piled high with her family’s belongings about to leave.
The full invasion has not begun “and things have already dropped below zero,” said Raed al-Fayomi, a displaced person in Rafah. “There is neither food nor water.”
Those fleeing have set up new tent camps in the town of Khan Younis – which was half-destroyed in an earlier Israeli offensive – and the town of Deir al-Balah, straining the infrastructure.
The international charity Project Hope said its medical clinic in Deir al-Balah has seen a surge in people from Rafah seeking care for blast injuries, infections and pregnancy.
“People are evacuating to nothing. There are no homes or proper shelters for people to go to,” said the group’s Gaza team leader based in Rafah, Moses Kondove.
Petropoulos said aid workers lacked supplies to help them settle in new places. “We just don’t have tents, we don’t have blankets, we don’t have bedding, none of the things that you would expect a population on the move to be able to get from the humanitarian system,” he said.
Israeli troops seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, forcing it to close. Rafah was the main entry point for fuel.
Israel says the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing – Gaza’s main cargo terminal – is open on its side and that humanitarian convoys are entering. It said trucks carrying 200,000 liters of fuel were allowed to enter the checkpoint on Friday.
But the UN said it was too dangerous for the workers to reach the crossing on the Gaza side to collect the aid because of Israel’s incursion and subsequent fighting with Hamas.
Israeli troops are also fighting Palestinian militants in the eastern part of Rafah, not far from the crossing points. The military said it discovered several tunnels and eliminated militants in close combat and airstrikes.
Hamas’s military wing said it struck a house where Israeli troops had taken up a position, an armored personnel carrier and soldiers operating on foot. There was no comment from the Israeli army.
No independent verification of battlefield accounts by either party is possible.
Hamas also said it fired on troops near the Kerem Shalom checkpoint. The military said they intercepted two launches. The checkpoint was initially closed after a Hamas rocket attack on nearby forces last weekend killed four Israeli soldiers.
Hamas rockets also hit the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Wednesday, slightly injuring a woman with shrapnel, Israel’s military and rescue services said Friday.
Five rockets were fired at the city, with one intercepted and most falling in the open, the military said. For most of the war, Gaza militants have fired thousands of rockets from Gaza at Israeli cities, most of them intercepted, but such attacks have become less frequent in recent months.
Israel claims Rafah is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza and key to its goal of destroying the group’s military and governance capabilities and returning dozens of hostages taken by Hamas in the deadly Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.
But Hamas has repeatedly regrouped, even in the worst-hit parts of Gaza.
Heavy fighting broke out this week in the Zeitoun area on the outskirts of Gaza City, in the northern part of the territory. Northern Gaza was the first target of the ground offensive, and late last year Israel said it had mostly routed Hamas there.
The north remains largely cut off from Israeli troops and the UN says around 300,000 people there are experiencing “absolute starvation”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the offensive against Rafah with or without American weapons, saying “we will fight with our claws” if necessary in a defiant statement late Thursday.
The US increased arms supplies to Israel during the war, and the Israeli military claims it has what it needs for operations in Rafah.
The war began with a surprise attack by Hamas in southern Israel last year, in which the militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 250 hostages. They still hold about 100 prisoners and the remains of more than 30 after most of the rest were released during a ceasefire last year.
Israel’s bombing and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its figures.
Much of Gaza has been destroyed and about 80 percent of Gaza’s population has been driven from their homes.
Israel’s incursion into Rafah has complicated months-long efforts by the US, Qatar and Egypt to achieve a ceasefire and the release of hostages. This week, Hamas said it had accepted the Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, but Israel said the plan did not meet its “basic” demands. Subsequent negotiations appeared to have ended without success on Thursday.
Hamas has demanded guarantees of an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as part of any deal, steps Israel has rejected.
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