Al Jazeera reports:

Israeli forces bombed areas in the southern border city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s internally displaced population is sheltering, as the United States warned that a military push into the city could be a “disaster”.

Aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if Israel follows through on its threat to enter Rafah, where people are desperate for shelter and one of the last remaining areas of the Gaza Strip into which its troops have not moved.

“To conduct such an operation right now with no planning and little thought in an area” where one million people are sheltering “would be a disaster,” State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said on Thursday.

He said Washington had “yet to see any evidence of serious planning for such an operation”.

Earlier, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that more than a million civilians were trapped in the city in southern Gaza.

“Half of Gaza’s population is now crammed into Rafah. They have nowhere to go,” he said. [Continue reading…]