UN chief: Israel’s relocation order ‘extremely dangerous’

UNITED NATIONS: Israel’s ultimatum that over one million people in northern Gaza should relocate within 24 hours is “extremely dangerous” and “simply not possible”, UN chief Antonio Guterres has said, asserting that “even wars have rules.”

UN officials in Gaza on Thursday were informed by their liaison officers in the Israeli military that the entire population of northern Gaza, approximately 1.1 million, should relocate to the southern part within the next 24 hours.

The same order applied to all UN staff and those

sheltered in UN facilities including schools, health centres and clinics.

“Moving more than one million people across a densely populated warzone to a place with no food, water, or accommodation, when the entire territory is under siege, is extremely dangerous and in some cases, simply not possible,” Guterres told reporters here on Friday.

The UN Secretary-General made those remarks before heading to a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

He said that after days of airstrikes, the Israeli Defense Forces have ordered the Palestinians in Gaza and its surroundings to move to the south of the territory.

Voicing his deep concern, the UN chief said that the “hospitals in the south of Gaza are already at capacity and will not be able to accept thousands of new patients from the north.”

The health system is also on the “brink of collapse” and “morgues are overflowing,” he said.

Guterres said 11 healthcare staff have been killed while on duty and there have been 34 attacks on health facilities in the past few days.

The “horrific terror attacks” by Hamas on Israel killed more than 1,200 people and injured thousands more last Saturday.

These were followed by intense bombardment of Gaza that has already killed 1,800 people, and injured thousands more, the UN chief said.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has informed WHO that it is impossible to evacuate vulnerable hospital patients without endangering their lives.