A resumed Israeli military assault in the overcrowded southern Gaza may lead many of one million refugees — including 900,000 sheltering in UN buildings — to try to push over the border into Egypt, Philippe Lazzarini, the chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has warned.

In an interview with The Guardian published before the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas expired, the UNRWA official urged Israel to think through the consequences of an offensive in the south if the temporary truce in the fighting was not extended.

Terming the killing of more than 15,000 Palestinians as a “staggering human tragedy”, Lazzarini said: “I don’t see how this can be justified through the concept of proportionality and self-defence.”

Lazzarini has no compunction going beyond saying Israel should abide by the rules of war to asserting that it is not doing so — a step the US and British administrations decline to take — and he believes it will be up to an international legal body to determine the facts in future, the report stated.

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