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The top EU crisis management official on Tuesday urged Israel to immediately open the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings into Gaza, crucial routes for getting humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.
"I … call on Israel to immediately open the two main crossing points into Gaza," Janez Lenarcic, EU commissioner for crisis management, said on X. "No other route can compensate for this."
"A ground offensive on Rafah is totally unacceptable. It would add a catastrophe to the catastrophe," he also said, referring to Israel threatening to invade Rafah, in southern Gaza, the city of last refuge for over a million Palestinians.
The Israeli army early on Tuesday said that its forces have seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing from southern Gaza into Egypt.
After Palestinian group Hamas announced late Monday that it had accepted a Qatari-Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, Israel's War Cabinet nonetheless decided to push ahead with an operation in Rafah.
The Israeli army issued immediate evacuation orders early Monday for Palestinians in eastern Rafah.
Rafah is home to more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians who have taken refuge from the war launched by Israel following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 people.
Since then, the Israeli onslaught has killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, besides causing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Seven months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave's population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine, according to the UN.
Israel also stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January said it is "plausible" that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and ordered Tel Aviv to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians there. -
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