JERUSALEM: The Israeli military announced on Thursday that 700,000 Palestinians have fled from Gaza City to the south since late August.
This statement comes as Israel continues its intensive air and ground assault on the Palestinian territory’s main urban centre.
When asked by AFP, the military confirmed that “700,000 Palestinians have evacuated” from Gaza City to the south of the Gaza Strip.
The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA reported a different figure on Thursday, stating that 388,400 displacement movements had been recorded since mid-August.
OCHA noted that most of these recorded movements were from Gaza City.
The United Nations estimated at the end of August that approximately one million people lived in Gaza City and its surroundings, where it has declared a famine.
Israel launched its major offensive on the urban hub in what it says is a bid to root out Hamas after nearly two years of devastating war.
“Over the past week, strikes in Gaza city have been especially intensive, including on IDP (internally displaced person) tents, residential buildings and public infrastructure, with many resulting in high numbers of casualties,“ OCHA said.
Gaza’s civil defence agency, a rescue force operating under Hamas authority, said Israeli strikes killed 22 people across the territory on Thursday.
The agency reported that five of those fatalities occurred in Gaza City.
An air strike on a home where displaced people had taken refuge in central Gaza killed 11 people, according to the civil defence.
Media restrictions in the territory and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the details provided by the civil defence or the Israeli military.
AFP footage from the aftermath of the strike in Al-Zawaida camp showed Palestinians digging through the rubble in a search for survivors.
“The whole place was destroyed and nothing was left fit for human use,“ said Youssef Younis, a resident.
Another Al-Zawaida resident, Ahmed Abu Dahrouj, said: “Our message is the war must end immediately because we are experiencing an extermination.”
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, Israeli military offensives have killed at least 65,502 Palestinians over nearly two years.
The ministry states that the majority of those killed were civilians, and the UN considers these figures reliable.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people.
An AFP tally based on Israeli figures indicates that most of the victims of the initial attack were civilians. – AFP
