Grief and fear mount in Rafah as people are trapped with nowhere safe to go
Palestinians mourn relatives killed in an Israeli bombing in Rafah.
© Mohammed Talatene/picture alliance via Getty Images
16 February 2024
Some 1.5 million people – including tens of thousands of pregnant women, new mothers and newborns – are now crammed into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town, in a desperate search for safety amid war. Tightly packed with nowhere to go, they find the prospect of further military operations in Rafah terrifying.
With bombs falling and just a trickle of aid, a public health disaster is worsening. Some 500,000 cases of communicable disease, including meningitis and acute Diarrhoea, have been reported. Women are reportedly miscarrying at a higher rate than before the war, and in many cases, Caesarean sections, amputations and other surgeries are being performed with partial anesthesia due to a lack of supplies. Everyone in Gaza is hungry, including 50,000 pregnant women, with malnutrition making them more susceptible to disease and less able to recover.
UNFPA and partners are providing support in this devastating crisis, but it’s not enough, as we do not have the access required to support all women in need. Military operations in Rafah would make it even harder to deliver aid, leaving “an already-fragile humanitarian operation at death’s door,” Martin Griffiths, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, has said.
We need a humanitarian ceasefire now, to end this brutal and intense bombardment of Gaza, to free all remaining hostages, and to enable full-scale aid deliveries to reach people in need across the territory.
“My family and I miraculously emerged from under the rubble,” Suhad tells UNFPA. “It was a tough journey to Rafah. It was exhausting walking long distances while pregnant.”
“Today, I am scheduled for a Caesarean section… Every time it rains, the tent floods and our beds get wet. It takes two or three days for the beds to dry out. The thing that worries me the most is how I'll keep my newborn daughter warm,” says Suhad. “I've chosen the name Juman for her. It means ‘Pearl.’”
“Unbelievable terror – what I suffer from the most is the extreme terror.” – Suhad, 36
Suhad is among the estimated 1.5 million people seeking safety in Rafah. Most are living in an enormous tent city. The majority are children, most of whom are starving. Famine is approaching at terrifying speed.
Everyone in Gaza is hungry, including the 50,000 pregnant women.
Taline, 11, now lives with her family in a displacement camp in Rafah. Every day she waits in a line for at least three hours to get water.
In Rafah’s Al-Helal Al-Emirati Maternity Hospital, 77 babies share 20 incubators.
According to a midwife, the maternity hospital currently conducts up to 78 deliveries a day.
Hospital workers are taking care of children whose parents are dead or missing.
“The situation in Gaza is beyond any of our worst nightmares, and it’s getting worse.” – Dominic Allen, UNFPA Representative for the State of Palestine
“We refuse to die.”
“Terror and anxiety is causing contractions in the uterus, leading to premature birth,” says Dr. Al Shaer.
“I didn't want to give birth during war in such dire circumstances,” says Samaa.
UNRWA remains the backbone of the humanitarian response, playing an indispensable role in getting supplies to people.
Decisions to withhold funds from UNRWA must be revoked. Abandoning UNRWA now is tantamount to abandoning Gaza.
There are 690,000 women and girls of menstruating age in Gaza.
“There is nothing left resembling the life we used to live before the war,” says Seba, 28.
“I hope the war ends, and by next summer I can come with my family to enjoy the sea,” says 8-year-old Hadeel, who is staying in a shelter on the beach in Rafah.
“The situation in Gaza is a festering wound on our collective conscience that threatens the entire region,” António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, has said.
Guterres continued by saying: “Nothing justifies the horrific terror attacks launched by Hamas against Israel on 7 October. Nor is there any justification for the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Yet Israeli military operations have resulted in destruction and death in Gaza at a scale and speed without parallel since I became Secretary-General.”
