Palestinians are leaving eastern Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, as an Israeli evacuation order affects some 250,000 people, the UN said on Tuesday.
The Israeli military has estimated that some 1.9 million people – more than 80% of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – are now clustered in the central region of the territory.
Although the exact number of people who fled Khan Younis was not immediately known, Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s top humanitarian official for Gaza, said there are around 1.9 million people displaced in Gaza. She said civilians in the besieged territory had been pushed “into an abyss of suffering.”
Israel told evacuees to seek refuge in an overcrowded coastal area that has few basic services and is dotted with sprawling tent camps. The war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and goods to Gaza, and people are completely dependent on humanitarian aid. The UN’s top court has concluded that there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza – a charge Israel vehemently denies.
On Monday, the Israeli military instructed Palestinians to evacuate a large area of Khan Younis and nearby areas, and move to the safe zone declared by Israel. This suggests that Israel will launch a new ground attack on the city.
However, an Israeli attack inside the safe zone on Tuesday killed at least 12 people, including nine members of the same family. Some of those killed had just fled Khan Younis hours earlier, said Asmaa Salim, a relative who lived in the targeted house in Deir al-Balah. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack.
Israel launched the war in Gaza following the Hamas attack on October 7, in which militants invaded southern Israel, killed around 1,200 people – most of them civilians – and abducted around 250, some of whom are still detained.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombings have killed more than 37,900 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
