Israeli military strikes Hezbollah target in southern Lebanon after infiltration and fire on IDF drone
State Department tells some Palestinian-Americans that Rafah Crossing “may be open” Saturday afternoon
TEL AVIV ( Web News )
The Israeli military says it has struck a Hezbollah target in southern Lebanon after one of its drones was fired on.
The move came in response to “the infiltration of unidentified aerial objects into Israel and fire on an IDF UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle],” the Israeli military said in a statement Saturday morning local time, adding that it intercepted both the aerial objects and the fire.
In an earlier statement, the Israeli military said the “infiltration of an unidentified object” took place near the city of Shfar’am in northern Israel.
The US State Department’s Consular Affairs Crisis Management System (CACMS) told family members that on Saturday the Rafah crossing “may be open.”
“We understand the security situation is difficult, but if you wish to depart Gaza you may want to take advantage of this opportunity,” the CACMS email said.
A State Department spokesperson told CNN they “are actively discussing this with our Israeli and Egyptian counterparts.”
“We support safe passage for civilians,” they said. “We are working with our Israeli and Egyptian partners to establish a safe humanitarian corridor both for Gazans trying to flee this war and to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches those in need within the territory.”
Anas Alfarra, a Lawful Permanent Resident of the US living in the San Francisco area who is trying to get family members out of Gaza, says the email falls short of what the US Embassy needs to be doing.
“Two ‘mays’ and a ‘wish’ in a situation that warrants much more,” Alfarra told CNN.
Mai Abushaaban, a 22-year-old from Houston who also received the email, has been desperately trying to evacuate her mother and sister from Gaza this week.
“I’ve had to put a lot of pressure on the embassy,” Abushaaban said. “It feels almost as though we were forgotten, I personally feel like we’re second-class citizens.”
This comes after the United States has continued to press the Egyptian and Israeli governments on “the importance of the Rafah crossing being open for American citizens and foreign nationals of other countries who want to leave and have the right to leave to be able to do so,” a senior State Department official said Friday.
US officials have been engaged in discussions for days to try to secure a humanitarian corridor that would allow Americans and other civilians to safely leave Gaza ahead of an expected Israeli military incursion.
The United Nations on Thursday said it was informed by the Israeli military that “the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza should relocate to southern Gaza within the next 24 hours,” but IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told CNN Friday that any deadline “may slip.”
The State Department official told the press traveling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the US’ focus has been “on American citizens, but other countries you could presume are engaged in trying to get their foreign nationals out as well.”
There are an estimated 500-600 Palestinian-Americans in Gaza.Tens of thousands have fled since Israel’s evacuation warning
Tens of thousands of people left their homes in Gaza on Friday after Israel’s military warned over one million people living north of Wadi Gaza to move south, according to a statement by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Saturday.
Prior to the warning, more than 400,000 Palestinians had been internally displaced, the statement added.
Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it had distributed food to 135,000 people in shelters across Gaza on Friday, but warned “humanitarian supplies are running low.”
OCHA added that most people in Gaza now have no access to water.
“As a last resort, people are consuming brackish water from agricultural wells, triggering serious concerns about the spread of waterborne diseases,” it said.