US President Donald Trump lashed out at a journalist, calling her the ‘worst reporter’, after she questioned him about survivors of the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files. He has not been accused of any crimes by Epstein’s victims and has denied any wrongdoing.

The evacuation of Palestinian patients and wounded via the Rafah crossing has been suspended for today, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has told Al Jazeera, adding that Israel informed the organisation about the move on Wednesday morning.

“Unfortunately, a few minutes ago, we were… informed that the evacuation process of today has been cancelled,” Raed al-Nims told Al Jazeera from Khan Younis in Gaza.

He said that the procedure should have seen sick and wounded people arrive at the Red Cross Society hospital for preliminary medical checkups before being transferred by ambulance to the Rafah crossing, then to Egyptian hospitals or elsewhere.

Only five Palestinian were permitted to leave for Egypt on Monday and only 16 on Tuesday – numbers far below the 50 Palestinians who Israeli officials said would be allowed to leave via the crossing daily.

Israel agreed to open the key crossing – the Gaza Strip’s only gateway to the outside world – after weeks of delay, but has placed restrictions on the movement of people through the crossing.

Only Palestinians who left Gaza during the war, and have passed strict security vetting from Israeli authorities, are being permitted to return.

Those who have recently returned have described being blindfolded, handcuffed, interrogated and sexually harassed as they made the trip.

More than 18,000 Palestinian patients are also awaiting medical evacuations through the crossing, including about 440 critical cases that need immediate attention, Gaza health officials say.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel was not giving any explanation as to why some Palestinians were being denied permission to leave or return to the Strip.

Uptick in attacks

The restrictions on the crossing come as Israel killed at least 10 Palestinians across Gaza overnight, in the latest uptick in violence despite a supposed “ceasefire agreement” in effect since October.

Among the casualties were a number of children, medical sources said on Wednesday.

The dead included seven people killed by Israeli shelling in Gaza City neighbourhoods, an Al Jazeera team on the ground reported.

Four people were killed in the Tuffah neighbourhood, and three others in the neighbourhood of Zeitoun, with two children among those killed in those attacks, an ambulance source told Al Jazeera.

In further attacks in the south of the Strip, at least three people were killed in Israeli shelling of displaced people’s tents in the Qizan Abu Rashwan area, south of Khan Younis, an Al Jazeera team reported, citing medical sources.

Despite the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect in October, Israel has continued to kill hundreds of Palestinians across the Strip.

On Tuesday, prior to the latest attacks, the Gaza Health Ministry said 529 Palestinians had been killed since the ceasefire, while 71,803 had been killed in Israeli attacks since the war began. Rights groups and a United Nations inquiry dubbed Israeli military actions a genocide. A case of genocide against Israel is under way at the International Court of Justice.

Reporting from Khan Younis, Al Jazeera’s Abu Azzoum said the attacks, despite the so-called “ceasefire” supposedly in place, had left Palestinians in Gaza “without any sense of respite”.

“There has been a surge in Israel’s military activities across Gaza in the past few hours,” he said.

“We can hear the … sound of Israeli drones hovering overhead, giving a sign of further potential attacks that might take place.”

Amid the latest attacks, Israel’s military said its armoured units and aircraft had conducted strikes in northern Gaza after a reserve officer came under fire, severely injuring him.

It said the injured officer had been evacuated to hospital after the incident, which took place “during routine operational activity” near the so-called “yellow line” demarcating areas under Israeli military control.

Abu Azzoum said Israel was moving the location of the “yellow line” in eastern Gaza, causing anxiety for residents there.

Palestinian killed in Jericho raid

While the killings have played out in Gaza, Israeli forces have also carried out attacks in the occupied West Bank.

Saeed Na’el al-Sheikh, a 24-year-old Palestinian man, was shot and killed by Israeli forces on Tuesday night during a raid on the city of Jericho, in the east of the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reported.

The Health Ministry said three other Palestinians were wounded.

Six more Palestinians were wounded in other attacks, including three who were shot, two who were beaten up by Israeli soldiers and a woman who was run over by a military vehicle.

Montaha Omer Mustafa, 18, was among many people who managed to get out of el-Fasher before the city’s seizure by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, but only after paying for passage and going days on foot with little water, moving through villages and scrubland.

As fighting closed in on the last big city held by the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in North Darfur state, tens of thousands of residents fled westwards, abandoning homes, possessions, and even family members.

El-Fasher almost emptied in a matter of days in October.

“Armed men stopped us and stole everything of value, gold, cash and food,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera from the Tawila refugee camp, some 50km (30 miles) west of el-Fasher.

Somewhere along the road – amid thirst, fear and the rush of thousands moving at once – her brother disappeared. They searched, then had to keep going.

There was no choice, she said, and she remains unsure of his fate.

Three Sudanese refugees narrated to Al Jazeera about their escape from el-Fasher, making a journey from a city which was under bombardment and siege to the Tawila refugee camp, where the sudden arrival of thousands has pushed already scarce resources to the brink.

‘Ghost town’

What the fleeing people left behind has become a “ghost town”, according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French acronym MSF), whose teams visited the city in January.

MSF said it fears that “a majority of the civilians who were still alive when the RSF seized the city were killed or displaced”.

More than 120,000 people fled the RSF’s capture of el-Fasher – approximately 75 percent of whom were already internally displaced people (IDPs) seeking refuge there – the International Organization for Migration said in January, while the World Food Programme says between 70,000 and 100,000 remain trapped in the city.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale’s School of Public Health, which has been monitoring the war, recounted a rare call last year with someone trapped in el-Fasher, telling Al Jazeera: “They had run out of food and water. And they … saw bodies everywhere … they came out during the night.

“We only got them on the phone once. We haven’t talked to them again.”

RSF accused of more war crimes

The RSF mounted a large offensive to capture el-Fasher late last year, after besieging the city for nearly 18 months.

Its long-anticipated fall, despite the fighters marooned in the city putting up a determined resistance, precipitated mass atrocities in el-Fasher, including the systematic targeting of non-Arab populations, particularly from the Zaghawa and Fur tribes, according to the United Nations and rights groups.

On January 19, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) deputy prosecutor told the UN Security Council that the RSF had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during its capture of el-Fasher.

Nazhat Shameem Khan said the fall of the city was followed by a “calculated campaign of the most profound suffering”, particularly targeting members of the Zaghawa and Fur ethnic groups. “This criminality is being repeated in town after town in Darfur,” she said.

Marwan Mohammed, an activist at the Tawila refugee camp, where the majority of the refugees have fled, told Al Jazeera recent escapees described scenes in the city as “the worst they’ve seen”, with neighbourhood streets strewn with corpses.

Satellite imagery analysed by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab showed systematic RSF efforts to destroy evidence of mass killings as piles of objects consistent with human remains were formed, large enough to be seen from space.

By late November, 72 percent of the clusters had shrunk and 38 percent were no longer visible.

A Sudan Tribune investigation published in January identified suspected mass graves across el-Fasher, along with secret detention centres where the RSF reportedly murders, rapes, tortures, starves and financially extorts civilians.

RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo acknowledged that his fighters had committed abuses in October and said some perpetrators had been arrested, a move met with scepticism by activists and rights groups.

Mohamed Badawi, a Sudanese human rights activist with the Uganda-based African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies who monitors Darfur, told Al Jazeera that a war economy had emerged to sustain the city, with RSF fighters charging exorbitant prices for goods to enter. The first aid convoy to enter el-Fasher since mid-2024 only came in mid-January.

“The stuff which gets through includes animal feed, salt, really basics for people,” Badawi said.

“The people inside are depending on their friends around the world … who send them money. There are no services inside the city. No water, no internet, no food. It has become a city in the dark centuries,” Badawi added.

Badawi said escaping el-Fasher has now become a system of extortion, with RSF fighters frequently kidnapping fleeing people for ransom.

“People are paying from $500 at the lower end and as much as $1,600,” he told Al Jazeera. “Many people in el-Fasher simply cannot afford this.”

‘My children and I are suffering’

Many of the displaced people leaving el-Fasher make a days-long journey to the Tawila refugee camp, some 50km (31 miles) west, through multiple checkpoints manned by RSF fighters who often charge fees for passage.

There, they join an estimated 1.4 million displaced people in what is now a sprawling network of camps in Tawila.

Long a refuge for those fleeing violence in North Darfur, the town offers distance from the front lines but little else for those on its margins.

“The weather is very cold. We do not have mattresses to sleep on or blankets to cover ourselves. We lack food, and getting water is extremely difficult,” Mustafa, the 18-year-old who lost her brother as she fled, said.

Zahra Mohamed Ali Abakar, 29, who fled el-Fasher months earlier, in June, said: “We sleep on the ground and under the sky.

“There are no tents; people are using sacks to cover themselves from the sun and in cold weather.”

The Sudan Doctors Network warned in October that Tawila’s health facilities are suffering from a severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies, a lack of suitable food for children, and even safe drinking water.

Very little has changed since then, said Mohammed, the activist in the Tawila camp.

Abdalla Ahmed Fadul Abu-Zaid escaped el-Fasher four-and-a-half months ago, after RSF shelling shattered his left leg, forcing doctors to amputate in the city, where medical supplies had all but run out months earlier, he said.

Since arriving in Tawila with his family of eight, they have received aid only twice, small rations of corn that ran out quickly.

His wound still requires regular dressing, but the journey to the hospital is costly, money he does not have.

“My children and I are suffering a lot,” he said.