Gaza village to which 200K Palestinians ordered to evacuate ‘unsafe’

CAIRO - 6 May 2024: The Mawasi area in Khan Yunis, to which Israel ordered the Palestinians in eastern Rafah to evacuate, is already overcrowded with tents and lacks basic services, according to Ahmed al-Shawa, director of NGOs in Gaza.

Mawasi is a tiny agricultural area in the coastal strip west of Khan Yunis. It does accommodate the large numbers of displaced people already there, let alone some 200,000 more refugees. 

The tents are set up on the beach and on agricultural land. The new tents are expected to be set up on the sand. Mawasi, however, does not offer the simplest form of life necessities, such as water, sanitation, and shelter services. 

Shawa warned that there are no clinics or hospitals in Mawasi either, and that it is not a safe zone because it has been bombed several times.