The young men who were arrested do not belong to any Palestinian factions (Anatolia)
Eyewitnesses and local sources reported that the Israeli army arrested a number of workers from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) during their displacement from the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip to the city of Rafah.
Fatima Abu Juaid reported, in a statement to Anadolu Agency, that Israeli forces arrested a number of UNRWA workers on Monday while they were heading from the city of Khan Yunis to Rafah, and she did not have accurate information about the number of detainees.
Abu Juaid confirmed that the young men working for UNRWA, who were arrested, do not belong to any Palestinian factions.
These arrests come days after Israel accused 12 UNRWA employees of participating in the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation launched by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on October 7, 2023 against Israeli military bases and settlements in the Gaza envelope.
In response to this allegation, the agency opened an investigation into the incident.
Following the announcement of the Israeli allegations, 18 countries and the European Union took a decision to suspend funding to UNRWA.
According to the United Nations, the countries that decided to suspend their funding to UNRWA until Tuesday evening are: the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Italy, Britain, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Iceland, Romania, Estonia. , and the European Union.
The Israeli accusations against the agency are not the first of their kind. Since the beginning of the aggression on Gaza, Israel has accused the agency’s employees of working for the benefit of the Hamas movement.
According to observers, this accusation is a prior justification for targeting UNRWA schools and facilities in the Gaza Strip, which host tens of thousands of displaced people, most of whom are children and women.
In the same context, another eyewitness reported that the Israeli army arrested dozens of young Palestinians who were displaced from Khan Yunis after tanks entered the western and southern areas of the city.
The witness stated that Israeli forces stormed a school for displaced people in the city of Khan Yunis and asked all males, including children, to remain inside, while the women and girls were removed from it.
She explained that the soldiers asked the males to sit on the ground, then shot them over their heads to terrorize them before taking them to an unknown destination.
Over the course of 10 days, the Israeli army increased its operations and bombing in the western and southern area of the city of Khan Yunis. The residents of these areas were asked, at the beginning of last week, to evacuate immediately and move to the city of Rafah.
Since the "Al-Aqsa Flood", Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza, which, as of Tuesday, resulted in the death of 26,900 Palestinians and the injury of 65,949 others, most of them children and women. The aggression also caused massive destruction of infrastructure, leaving an “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” according to Palestinian and international reports.
Source: Anadolu Agency