UN says over 180k displaced from Gaza’s Khan Younis in four days

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 added 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.

At least 39,175 people have been killed and 90,403 injured in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to Palestinian authorities.

The UN agency for Palestinians also said nine out of every 10 people in the besieged Gaza Strip have been “forcibly displaced” during the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

“Families seek shelter where they can: overcrowded schools, destroyed buildings, makeshift tents on the sand or amid piles of trash,” the UNRWA wrote on X on Friday, adding, “None of these places are safe. People have nowhere left to go.”

The UNRWA and many other humanitarian agencies and rights organizations have repeatedly warned the world about the huge humanitarian consequences of the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, which has reduced much of the territory to rubble.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also said the humanitarian situation in Gaza is a “total disaster,” blaming a military campaign of a “chaotic nature” and the lack of security in the strip.

“With the combination of these obstacles, with the total insecurity in the country, humanitarian aid is far from being sufficient,” Guterres told reporters during a press briefing on Thursday.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is a total disaster. And it is a total disaster because it’s the combination of two things. First, a military campaign that has have the highest level of killing and destruction that I remember in any other military campaign since I am secretary general anywhere in the world. And the military campaign that has a certain chaotic nature,” he added.

“First, the North was attacked, people were told to go to the south. Then the center was attacked and people was also told to go to the South. But all of a sudden they had to go back to the North because apparently the problem was not solved.”

“Then they went to the South, but all of a sudden they went to the center again, because also apparently the problem in the center was not solved. And any time people were told to move to somewhere else and people were moving from place to place in search of safety that doesn’t exist in any place,” he continued.

The UN chief lamented that Gaza is in a situation of “total lawlessness”, and that “law and order has completely disappeared” in the strip.

“Nobody is in charge of security anywhere in the area of Gaza. So we see convoys looted at any moment. And the worst, we had in three successive days, three UN convoys that were hit by fire, on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. On Sunday, they were, the bullets were lost. But on Monday and Tuesday, five bullets and four bullets penetrated our vehicles. And, they were shot by the Israeli military.”