The United Nations confirmed Saturday that 800,000 Palestinians have left the town of Rafah, in southern Gaza, as Israel begins its attack on Hamas battalions there.
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), announced the number of evacuees — and warned of the risks they face.
The number of evacuees far exceeds the estimates that were discussed in advance of the Israeli operation, which began on May 6, amid U.S. opposition.
The Biden administration warned that an attack on Rafah could cause civilian casualties there.
That seems less likely, with a large portion of the city’s residents leaving. However, many of those on the road will lack access to basic services, and not all of them have encamped in “safe” areas such as the Al-Muwasi humanitarian zone.
Israel says that defeating Hamas in Rafah is crucial to success in the war against the terror organization, which attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
Rafah sits in a strategic location near the Egyptian border. Reports indicate that Israel has already located some 50 cross-border tunnels, which were used to smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.