UN says 150,000 Palestinians flee Khan Younis as Israel intensifies atrocities

Louise Wateridge, from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said on Wednesday that the Palestinians fled the city after Israel announced the latest evacuation order.

"Over 80% of the Gaza Strip has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as no-go zones by the Israeli military," Wateridge said.

The UN official went on to say that people are moving to Dayr al-Balah and western Khan Yunis, which are already “extremely overcrowded” areas.

“They’ve got limited shelters and limited services available. They can barely accommodate the people who are already in these areas,” Wateridge added.

Separately, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also said that by monitoring population movements on the ground, it has assessed that 150,000 people had fled Khan Yunis.

The agency said many people were “trapped in the evacuation area,” including “people with reduced mobility and family members supporting them.”

On Monday, the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for eastern parts of Khan Yunis.

The occupying regime ordered the Palestinians living there, Gaza’s second-largest city, to urgently leave to an unspecified zone.

Earlier orders told the Palestinians to go to the Mawasi area, but that camp city has repeatedly been attacked.

Such evacuation orders generally signal imminent ground assaults by the barbarous Israeli war machine.

Since the start of the aggression, the Israeli regime has been committing war crimes in Gaza, killing at least 39,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring more than 90,000 others.