Gaza crisis: 180,000 displaced in just four days

More than 180,000 Palestinians have fled shelling around the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis in four days, according to the United Nations.

Recent “intensified hostilities” in the Khan Younis area, more than nine months after the start of the Israeli war, have fueled “new waves of internal displacement in Gaza,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said on Friday.

He said “around 182,000 people” were displaced from central and eastern Khan Younis between Monday and Thursday, while “hundreds of others remain stranded in eastern Khan Younis.”

On Monday, the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for parts of the southern city, announcing that its forces would “operate forcefully” there, including in an area previously declared a humanitarian safe zone.

Earlier, an Al Jazeera team in Deir el-Balah reported that at least 18 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said people injured in the strikes 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 haven’t had time to gather their belongings,” she said.

“They are suffering from the heat, the spread of diseases and poor hygiene conditions, causing skin rashes and other problems,” Khoudary noted.

Two more deaths were reported in Gaza City in the north and one death in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of the enclave, according to Al Jazeera staff on the ground.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum in Deir el-Balah reported that Israeli warplanes also bombed eastern areas of the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said in a statement that troops fought Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis and destroyed tunnels and other infrastructure, while trying to suppress small units that continued to hit troops with mortar fire.

The military said troops have 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.

The report said seven small units that were firing mortars at troops were hit in an airstrike, while further south in Rafah, four fighters were also killed in airstrikes.

A Telegram channel operated by the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main armed groups in Gaza, said fighters were fighting fierce battles with Israeli troops east of Khan Younis using machine guns, mortars and anti-tank weapons.

UN Security Council “failed”: Mansour

Later on Friday, Palestine’s envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, criticized the UN Security Council (UNSC) for failing to secure a ceasefire and end Israel’s nine-month war in the Gaza Strip.

“We have failed collectively. This council has failed,” the Palestinian envoy said during a special session of the council on the humanitarian response in Gaza.

“We can continue counting aid trucks, talking about routes and imagining alternatives, but the only true measure of our success is our ability to alleviate human suffering – and the suffering of the Palestinians is Israel’s goal and desire,” Mansour said.

“Whatever solutions you come up with, [Israel] will continue to ensure that they fail until it is forced to change course. And the indispensable first step is an immediate ceasefire.”

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan began his speech to the Security Council by recounting the story of his family’s extermination at the hands of the Nazis.

“This time of unfathomable hatred we refer to as ‘never again,’” he said. “Yet it never happened again.”

Erdan said that this time the perpetrators of the October 7 attacks were “Hamas Nazis” who aimed to exterminate 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 officials.

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.

Via news agencies