the city of Rafah, the last refuge of about 1.5 million forcibly displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip

an estimated 600,000 children [live in Rafah]

One in three people in Rafah is a child.

As of 16 February, the Israeli forces’ operation in the the Nasser Hospital complex in Khan Younis continues. The Israeli military alleged that Hamas was holding hostages or withholding the bodies of Israelis within the compound, and subsequently reported that its forces arrested twenty of the suspects from the 7 October attacks in Israel. On 15 February, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that hundreds of patients and staff had been relocated to a building within the hospital compound, where they lacked food, water, and baby formula, and that the hospital generators had stopped functioning, putting the lives of six patients on ventilators in the intensive care unit (ICU), and three premature babies, at risk. On the morning of 16 February, the Ministry of Health reported that five ICU patients had died due to the depletion of oxygen. On 15 February, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported that the hospital had been shelled, killing and wounding an undetermined number of people, and that one of its staff was unaccounted for. On 15 February, Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, expressing his concern about developments at the hospital, stated the “wounded and sick, as well as medical personnel and facilities must be protected. All feasible precautions must be taken to spare patients, staff and civilians sheltering in the hospital. Hospitals must be places of greater safety, not of war.”