Mass flight from cities in Gaza following new Israeli evacuation orders

The Israeli attacks appear to be continuing full force, and the United Nations has condemned yet another attack on a school used as a refuge for internally displaced persons.

The orders that Israel gave for parts of Khan Younis in the south and Deir al-Balah in the center of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday affect 115 different places with over 150,000 people, according to Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) calls the forced relocation inhumane. Among the displaced are also the organisation’s employees.

– People have no possessions left, nowhere to go. There are no places left to set up tents. The overpopulation, the severe water shortage and very few sanitary facilities fuel the spread of disease. And we are unable to keep up with the enormous needs, writes MSF’s project coordinator Jacob Granger X (formerly Twitter).

Precarious water shortage

In Deir al-Balah, the water supply has decreased by 70 percent, and there is also a critical lack of hygiene products, according to a statement fra Dujarric.

So far in August, Israel has issued evacuation orders covering a quarter of a million people, according to the UN overview.

According to the UN, 90 percent of Gaza’s more than 2 million inhabitants have been driven to flee since the war began on October 7, many of them time and time again. The areas where they are huddled together are becoming increasingly cramped, and the UN has already determined that there are no longer any safe areas for the civilian population in the Palestinian area.

Close to 30 are reported killed

On Thursday morning, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that eleven people had been killed in an Israeli attack on a residential building in the town of Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Gaza Strip. The attack took place early Thursday, according to Wafa, which also reports that there are children among those killed.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli military says, however, that the attack was intended to hit what she refers to as a terrorist target, and she also says that the military is not aware that others have been killed.

At the same time, fighting continues in other parts of Gaza, including in Rafah in the south, where Israel claims to have killed 50 armed Palestinians on Wednesday.

Neither the information from the Palestinian nor the Israeli side has been confirmed by independent sources.

The AP news agency and hospital sources on the scene report that a number of bodies have been brought to hospital. Nine victims were brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, including a woman and a child, while al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah received eight bodies, according to an AP journalist who counted the bodies.