The United Nations says there are no safe zones in Gaza, including shelters flying the UN flag, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday.
“There are no UN designated safe zones in Gaza. I think that all my senior colleagues have been very clear, including the Secretary-General saying there are no safe places in Gaza,” Dujarric told a briefing. “There are shelters that fly the UN flag… But we have seen since the beginning of the conflict that those places that fly the UN flag are not safe either.”
Dujarric was answering a question regarding the US State Department Spokesperson’s Matthew Miller comment during a briefing that people in Gaza should go to UN-designated stores that are listed on Israeli lists as “deconfliction zones that should not be the target of military campaigns.”
In the meantime, Hamas spokesman in Lebanon Osama Hamdan confirmed on Tuesday that there are no safe zones in the Gaza Strip, despite the statements of the United States and Israel on the matter.
"There are no safe zones in the entire Gaza Strip, despite the statements of the United States and the propaganda of the occupier [Israel], because the occupier has turned the entire territory into a zone of total war by its barbaric machine aimed at children and women," Hamdan told a press conference.
On October 7, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched a surprise large-scale rocket attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, breaching the border and killing and taking captives in nearby Israeli military sites and communities. The movement said its operation, Al-Aqsa Flood, was in response to Israeli provocations and occupation of Palestinian territories.
Israel launched retaliatory strikes and ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to more than 2 million people, cutting off supplies of water, food and fuel. On October 27, Israel launched a large-scale ground incursion into Gaza, ostensibly to eliminate Hamas fighters and rescue hostages.
Later, Qatar mediated a deal between Israel and Hamas on a temporary truce and the exchange of some of the prisoners and hostages, as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The truce was extended several times, but on Friday, the fighting was resumed.
The escalation of the conflict has resulted in the deaths of some 1,200 people in Israel and more than 16,000, mostly children and women, in Gaza. Meanwhile, at least 256 Palestinians have died as a result of Israeli violence in the West Bank.
