MORE than 180,000 Palestinians have fled bombardment around the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis in four days, the United Nations has said.
Recent “intensified hostilities” in the Khan Younis area, more than nine months into the Israeli war, have fuelled “new waves of internal displacement across Gaza”, said the UN humanitarian agency OCHA on Friday.
It said that “about 182,000 people” have been displaced from central and eastern Khan Younis between Monday and Thursday, while “hundreds of other people remain stranded in eastern Khan Younis”.
The Israeli military on Monday issued evacuation orders for parts of the southern city, announcing its forces would “forcefully operate” there, including in an area previously declared a safe humanitarian zone.
Earlier, an Al Jazeera team in Deir el-Balah reported that at least 18 people were killed in Israeli air raids on Khan Younis.
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, reported that people injured in the attacks could not be reached “because the Israeli military did not give them time to evacuate after ordering the evacuation”.
“People who managed to evacuate are on the streets; they did not have time to gather their belongings,” she said.
“They are suffering from the heat, the diseases spreading, and the poor hygienic conditions causing skin rashes and other issues,” Khoudary noted.
Two more deaths were reported in Gaza City in the north and one death in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the enclave, according to Al Jazeera’s team on the ground.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum in Deir el-Balah reported that Israeli warplanes also bombed the eastern areas of the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
