UN chief to issue fresh call for ‘humanitarian ceasefire’ while visiting Gaza border
Guterres to tour Egyptian side of Rafah as part of ‘annual Ramadan solidarity trip,’ will later visit UNRWA facilities in Jordan in wake of terror allegations against some staffers
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit the Egypt-Gaza border city of Rafah on Saturday to reiterate his call for a humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, his spokesman said Friday.
Guterres, who is currently in Brussels, will arrive in Egypt on Friday evening for “his annual Ramadan solidarity trip which comes this year in turbulent times, with the conflict in Gaza,” spokesman Farhan Haq said.
While there, the secretary-general will meet aid workers on the Egyptian side of Rafah, which is split over the border with the Gaza Strip and has been a key gateway for humanitarian supplies reaching the territory.
Guterres will also visit a hospital in el-Arish, an Egyptian city that sits close to the Gaza border.
Israel has vowed to eventually launch an offensive on the Palestinian side of Rafah, the last major Hamas stronghold in Gaza, which US Secretary State Antony Blinken has warned in recent days would be a “mistake” that “risks further isolating Israel around the world.”
Around 1.5 million people are crowded into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, after almost six months of fighting that was triggered by Hamas’s onslaught in southern Israel on October 7, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 253 hostage — mostly civilians — amid brutal atrocities.
At least 31,988 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s offensive in October, according to the Hamas-led health ministry in Gaza, an unverified figure which doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians, and believed to include Palestinians killed by terror groups’ rocket misfires.
During his visit, Guterres — who last visited Rafah in October — will “reiterate his calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and silencing the guns, particularly in Gaza and Sudan,” Haq said.
In Cairo he is expected to have iftar — an evening meal marking the end of Ramadan’s daily fast — with refugees who fled Sudan because of ongoing conflict there.
Guterres will then travel to Amman in Jordan to visit UNRWA facilities.
UNRWA, the UN agency which supports Palestinian refugees, has been embroiled by Israeli allegations that 12 of its 30,000 employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks.
The UN has since fired the employees after it received evidence from Israel that they participated in the October attack, and launched both an internal and an independent investigation into UNWRA. But Israel has since offered what it says is intelligence to stakeholders showing that some 1,200 of UNRWA’s 13,000 staffers have ties to Gaza terrorists.
Israel has long pushed for UNRWA’s closure, arguing that it helps perpetuate the conflict with the Palestinians since it confers refugee status upon descendants of those originally displaced around the time of Israel’s War of Independence, unlike other refugee groups around the world.
