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.
Israel’s military said in a statement that troops battled Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis and destroyed tunnels and other infrastructure, as they sought to suppress small units that have continued to hit troops with mortar fire.
The military said troops had killed about 100 Palestinian fighters since Israeli troops began their latest operation in Khan Younis on Monday, which continued as pressure mounted for a deal to halt the fighting.
It said seven small units that had been firing mortars at the troops were hit in an air raid, while further south, in Rafah, four fighters were also killed in air raids.
A Telegram channel operated by the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main armed groups in Gaza, said fighters had been waging fierce battles with Israeli troops east of Khan Younis with machineguns, mortars and antitank weapons.
The UN Security Council ‘has failed’: Mansour
Later on Friday, Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour slammed the UN Security Council (UNSC) for failing to secure a ceasefire and bring an end to Israel’s nine-month-old war on the Gaza Strip.
“We have collectively failed. This council has failed,” the Palestinian envoy said during a special council session on the humanitarian response in Gaza.
“We can continue counting aid trucks and speaking of routes and imagining alternatives, but the only true measure of our success is our ability to alleviate human suffering – and the suffering of Palestinians is Israel’s goal and desire,” Mansour said.
“Whatever solutions you come up with, [Israel] will continue ensuring they fail until it is forced to change course. And the first, indispensable step is an immediate ceasefire.”
Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan began his address to the UNSC by retelling the story of his family’s extermination at the hands of the Nazis.
“To this time of unfathomable hatred, we refer to as ‘never again’,” he said. “Yet, never again happened again.”
Erdan said this time, the perpetrators of the October 7 attacks were “Hamas Nazis” who had the objective of exterminating the Jews.
“We will defend ourselves from those who seek to annihilate us,” he said.
At least 39,175 people have been killed and 90,403 injured in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to Palestinian authorities.
The death toll in Israel from the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 is estimated at 1,139, with dozens of people still held captive in Gaza.
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