February 10, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

The United Nations is "extremely worried about the fate of civilians in Rafah," UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Friday as Israel began drawing up an evacuation plan for the estimated 1.3 million Palestinians living in the southern Gaza city.

Speaking at his daily news briefing, Dujarric said people "need to be protected," but added that the UN also "does not want to see any forced mass displacement, of people, which is by definition against their will.”

UN Humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths also issued a statement Friday urging for the protection of civilians.

Griffiths added that Rafah's population of over 1 million people "have endured unthinkable suffering" and have been moving for months. 

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed Israel's military to plan for the “evacuation of the population” from Rafah, his office said in a statement, ahead of an anticipated ground assault.

The post was updated with the statement from Martin Griffiths.

CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to travel to Cairo for a Tuesday meeting on the ongoing Gaza hostage negotiations, according to two sources familiar with the plans. 

One of the sources said Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Israel's Mossad Director David Barnea are also expected to attend.

Palestinians in Rafah told CNN they have nowhere to go if Israel were to enter the city in southern Gaza, located near the border with Egypt.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday directed the military to plan for the “evacuation of the population” from Rafah, his office said in a statement. On Thursday, he said the Israel Defense Forces would “soon go into Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion.” 

Mahmoud Khalil Amer, who was displaced from the Al Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, said his staying in a tent near a cemetery in Rafah. 

“I am basically sleeping next to the dead,” he said. “It feels like hell, I feel all the pain, we are not living, the dead are better than us,” he said. "They are rested. But for us, our lives are torture, we can hardly get any water, we don’t have any money. The situation is very bad. The people who used to have stable jobs and income are now suffering and their situation is horrible."

Abu Mohamed El-Helw, displaced from Khan Younis, said that “there is no place left” for people in Rafah to go “unless they open the borders and let us out.” 

El-Helw said people “are tired from the war” and have become “used to” threats from Israel. 

More than 1.3 million people are believed to be in Rafah, the majority displaced from other parts of Gaza, according to the United Nations. 

CNN's Mick Krever contributed reporting.

Moody’s Investors Service warned Thursday it could downgrade Israel’s credit rating due to the severity of the military conflict with Hamas.

A downgrade could make it more expensive for Israel to borrow just as the country gears up for what could be a prolonged war.

Moody’s said its review will focus on the duration and scale of the conflict — and how it impacts Israel’s economy, institutions and public finances. The credit ratings firm said the review could take longer than the typical three-month period.

In July, before the deadly terror attacks by Hamas against Israel, Moody’s warned that a controversial overhaul of Israel’s judicial system risked plunging the country into further turmoil that could hurt its economy and security.

An Israeli undercover operation on a hospital in the occupied West Bank last month may amount to a war crime, according to five United Nations special rapporteurs.  

The experts said that outside active hostilities, “at most Israeli forces may have been entitled to arrest or detain them,” and were only entitled to use force “if strictly necessary to prevent an imminent threat to life or serious injury.”  

About the deadly raid: On January 30, undercover Israeli forces infiltrated the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin and killed three Palestinian men, according to the hospital and the Palestinian state news agency.  

Dramatic CCTV video captured around a dozen commandos disguised as nurses, women in hijabs, and others, with one pushing a wheelchair and another carrying a baby car seat, as they stormed a hospital corridor carrying assault weapons.  

Hamas said the three men were sleeping at the time of the attack.

Last month, Israel's Defense Forces chief of staff Herzi Halevi claimed the men who were shot and killed were involved in a terrorist cell planning to carry out a “serious attack” on Israeli civilians.  

The Israeli Security Agency, better known as Shabak, which conducted the raid was not immediately available for comment on the UN experts’ statement. 

CNN's Abeer Salman and Richard Greene contributed reporting.

A civilians brace themselves for a potentially imminent nsraeli incursion into the border city of Rafah, several non-governmental organizations have issued warnings about the humanitarian consequences for the city.

The Israel Defense Forces will “soon go into Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. The US would not support an Israeli military operation in Rafah “without serious planning,” US State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said Thursday.

An estimated 1.3 million people are currently in Rafah, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has estimated.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC): Rafah could soon turn "into a zone of bloodshed and destruction that people won’t be able to escape," it said in a press release Thursday. "Attacks in areas where they provide food, water and shelter means this life-saving support will be impeded, if not entirely stopped," cautioned Angelita Caredda, an NRC regional director.

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF): The UN agency also shared its fears for the over 600,000 children sheltering in Rafah, many of whom have "been displaced from other parts of Gaza."

As months of heavy fighting in the north have practically wiped out healthcare and humanitarian facilities in the north, officials are calling for the scant services that remain in the south to be protected.

"We need Gaza’s last remaining hospitals, shelters, markets and water systems to stay functional. Without them, hunger and disease will skyrocket, taking more child lives," UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell implored in a statement published Thursday.

Iraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed the military to plan for the “evacuation of the population” from Rafah alongside the defeat of Hamas in that southern Gaza city, his office said in a statement on Friday. 

More than 1.3 million people are believed to be in Rafah, the majority displaced from other parts of Gaza, according to the United Nations. 

Netanyahu on Thursday said that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would “soon go into Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion.”

In the statement issued Friday, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that it was not possible to both eliminate Hamas and leave “four Hamas battalions in Rafah.”

“On the other hand, it is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones,” it added. “That is why the Prime Minister directed the IDF and the defense establishment to bring to the Cabinet a dual plan for both the evacuation of the population and the disbanding of the battalions.”

Rafah is the last major population center in Gaza not occupied by the IDF.

Previous reporting from CNN's Ivana Kottasova in Khan Younis, Jennifer Hansler in Washington, and Vasco Cotovio and Lauren Kent in London.

Israel had bombed Rafah four times and damaged the crossing, therefore preventing the entry of aid into Gaza, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement.

The statement was issued in response to US President Joe Biden's remarks on Thursday, saying that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi Sisi did not want to “open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in” but he “talked to him.”

The presidency said that once the Israeli bombing stopped, it repaired the crossing to allow the entry of aid into Gaza.