City of Rishon LeZion hit by rocket attack, Israeli emergency agency says
Palestinian American Nabil Alshurafa says his 66-year-old mom is "trapped in Gaza," after the war broke out between Hamas and Israel while she was visiting her sick mother.
He described the situation as "challenging."
"I spoke to her about 24 hours ago. I couldn't reach her this morning," he said. "It's been an impossible situation. There's no food. There's little water. They're eating garbanzo beans, whatever they can find. When my uncle went to go get some bread, it took him about two and a half hours to wait in line to get bread when the Israeli military bombed the store forcing everyone to fall and collapse on top of each other."If she needed to go to the Rafah border to leave, "she'll have a very difficult time," he said.
"She was trapped in Gaza. She was 10 minutes away from getting out of the border, the Rafah border, on October 10, when the Israeli military struck down the Rafah border, shutting it and trapping 600 US citizens and hundreds of European and other international citizens," he said.
He questioned why the US government couldn't get its citizens out.
"Right now, it's no longer just about my mother. There are thousands of children, mothers, women being killed. I had four family members that were killed as well recently. Buildings are being wiped out, neighborhoods wiped out. Doctors are operating without anesthetic. This is not Israel at war. This is Israel performing genocide on the Palestinian people. And our government is just sitting there quietly," he said.
Here's what the US government has said about its citizens stuck in Gaza: White House official John Kirby told CNN on Monday there are “a lot of factors” contributing to why Americans trapped in Gaza have not been able to leave, even after the first tranche of humanitarian aid was successfully delivered via the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza over the weekend.
On Wednesday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told CNN that "the Egyptians are — on their side — ready, they say, to accept people, foreign nationals, United States citizens, if they can get to Egyptian processing. He added that the US continues to collaborate with Egypt, Israel and the United Nations on the matter.
Additionally, Mark Regev, senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Americans who are stuck on the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing are not able to leave because “Hamas won’t let them out.”
However, Palestinian Americans visiting or living in Gaza have told CNN they were desperately trying to find ways out of the region but have received little or no support from US Embassy officials.
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