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Israeli-Palestinian conflict

WHO concerned over Israel’s plans to evacuate Palestinians from Rafah

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for an immediate ceasefire

GENEVA, February 11. /TASS/. The World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned over reports that Israel plans to evacuate people from Rafah to expand its offensive, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

"Reports of Israel’s plans to evacuate Palestinians from Rafah, in southern Gaza, to expand its ground offensive are extremely worrying," he wrote on his X page and called for an immediate ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the country’s military to work out a plan to evacuate civilians from the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and exterminate Hamas battalions still entrenched in the city. On February 7, Netanyahu said that the Israeli military was ordered to prepare for an operation in the city of Rafah located near the border with Egypt.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 240 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.

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Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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