Gaza Crisis Deepens: Quarter Million Displaced Amid New Israeli Offensive, UN Reports
Gaza Crisis Deepens: Quarter Million Displaced Amid New Israeli Offensive, UN Reports
Over 250,000 people have been displaced from Gaza City in the past month, with tens of thousands more fleeing daily as a new Israeli offensive intensifies, according to recent UN figures. Israeli artillery, tanks, and warplanes continued strikes on Gaza City, prompting what a UN official described as “new waves of mass displacement,” with approximately 60,000 residents having fled the latest assault within 72 hours.
Israeli military officials estimate a much higher total number of civilians have evacuated Gaza City following their orders, citing drone surveillance among multiple sources for their figure of up to 450,000 evacuees. An unbroken column of heavily laden vehicles and families packed Gaza’s narrow coastal road as Palestinians headed south towards designated areas, facing soaring transport costs that forced many to walk, burdened with belongings and young children.
Israeli forces now control Gaza City’s eastern suburbs and have advanced into areas like Sheikh Radwan and Tel al-Hawa, positioning them to move on central and western districts where the remaining population is sheltering. Swathes of Gaza City, once a bustling commercial and cultural hub, have been reduced to uninhabitable ruins. Many of its former million-plus residents had already been displaced multiple times.
The Israeli military opened a second evacuation route through the middle of the Gaza Strip for 48 hours to encourage the exodus. However, aid agencies warn that conditions in the designated “humanitarian zone” in the south are dire, lacking sufficient food, medicine, space, and adequate shelter. Rosalia Bollen of Unicef criticized the area as “inappropriate, unprepared and unsafe.”
The humanitarian crisis is exacerbated by warnings from internationally respected experts that much of northern Gaza is gripped by famine. Amidst the escalating conflict, Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, has warned of fierce resistance. The Israeli military reported four soldiers killed by a roadside bomb in Rafah, and an explosive drone from Yemen struck Eilat, while an attacker killed two at the West Bank-Jordan border crossing.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rejected advice from senior generals regarding the new offensive, facing accusations from observers that he seeks to prolong the war to stave off early elections. This comes as a UN commission of inquiry accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, a finding Israel rejected as “distorted and false.”
The territory’s health ministry reported that at least 79 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes or gunfire across Gaza in the past 24 hours, mostly in Gaza City. The conflict, triggered by a Hamas attack in October 2023 that killed approximately 1,200 people, has seen Israel’s retaliatory campaign kill at least 65,000 people and injure over 160,000.
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