Israel to launch Rafah invasion if no deal reached on captives in 72 hours: Report
The Israeli military has reportedly finalized plans to launch an all-out military offensive against the densely-populated southern Gaza city of Rafah in the next 72 hours.
The Israeli Ynet news site reported on Tuesday that the occupation army’s chief of staff Herzi Halevi had approved final plans for the phased invasion of Rafah as well as the refugee camps in the central Gaza strip.
The report said that the next 48 to 72 hours will see either a deal on captives or the commencement of the assault.
Israeli tanks are lined up on the border between Gaza and the occupied territories and ready to start the raid, it added, noting that the attack can be halted or delayed in case of progress in talks over captives.
Israel waged the US-backed Gaza onslaught on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
During its operation, Hamas took 253 Israeli settlers into captivity. It is believed that 129 of the captives remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 were released during a week-long truce in late November.
Some of the captives were killed in Israeli air strikes on the besieged territory.
Rafah, situated in the Gaza Strip’s closed southern border with Egypt, is home to around 1.5 million Palestinians who have been displaced due to Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged territory.
Israel had designated Rafah a “safe zone,” but in recent months it has been threatening a full-scale military aggression, leaving the people sheltering there terrified with nowhere to go.
The assault has mounted fears over a new carnage against Palestinians and drawn global condemnations.
In February, World Health Organization (WHO) doctors warned that the Israeli offensive against Rafah would create “a human disaster beyond imagination”.
The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 34,535 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 77,704 others.
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