BBC News Arabic evacuates staff from Gaza via the Rafah Crossing

BBC News Arabic evacuated its press crew from the Gaza Strip through the Rafah land crossing, after the crew covered the ongoing war there for over four months.

The Egyptian authorities facilitated the crossing of the nine-member press crew through the Rafah Crossing after their families left the Strip through the crossing weeks ago.

The Rafah crossing is the gateway that connects Gaza to the world and is used for the entry of humanitarian and relief aid and the exit of individuals wounded in Israel’s genocidal war for treatment in Egypt and other countries.

On Sunday, flouting the provisional ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel launched an air campaign on Rafah, killing more than 65 Palestinians. The city had been declared a “safe zone” by occupation forces and over a million Palestinians had taken shelter there after being forced out of their homes in the northern areas of the Strip since 7 October.

The Israeli offensive has left 85 per cent of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

The UN, Egypt, and several other countries, including the US, warned Israel against launching an attack on Rafah, as it could cause what they described as a “disaster” in the city crowded with more than half of the two million displaced civilians from across Gaza.

OPINION: The BBC and its choice of words must surely make it complicit in war crimes