Reply #16: IRIN: Gazans have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

[laststeamtrain]

Gazans have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

TEL AVIV, 11 January 2009 (IRIN) - Palestinians in the Gaza Strip received on 10 January air-dropped leaflets warning them that the Israeli military was about to step up operations against militant targets there and that they should take necessary precautions.

However, it remained unclear what Palestinians could do, given that UN officials have said Gazans have no safe place to hide.

"There is nowhere safe in Gaza," Allegra Pacheco, deputy head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories, said. His views were echoed by Max Gaylord, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Jerusalem.

The leaflet told Gazans that they should follow the recent example of Rafah's residents, who fled their homes in the south of the Gaza Strip after receiving similar announcements instructing them to do so just before the Israeli airforce began to pound the city, which is along the Egyptian border. Israeli officials said Palestinian militants were using tunnels to smuggle weapons under this border.

Witnesses said up to 50,000 people fled the town, and the UN reported that Israel's ongoing Operation Cast Lead, which began on 27 December, has created the largest number of forcibly displaced Palestinians since the 1967 war...http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=82301