Dec. 6 (UPI) — More than 600,000 people in southern Gaza have been ordered to move to avoid Israeli ground attacks and airstrikes, according to the U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees, which warned its humanitarian operation was at the “breaking point.”
Nearly half of those under evacuation orders have been forced to leave their homes previously, United Nations Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said Tuesday in a post on X.
“There is nowhere to go as shelters, including UNRWA’s, are beyond and over their capacity. The limited humanitarian assistance allowed strangles our operations. The siege might become a major source of death,” Lazzarini wrote.
The World Health Organization said it was seeing a rise in infectious diseases due to the conditions people were living in, with 12,000 acute respiratory infections and diarrhea cases at 40-50 times normal levels.
Israel Defense Forces issued fresh evacuation orders early Wednesday, warning it was conducting “forceful” military operations against Hamas and other militant groups in the Khan Younis area in the south of the Gaza Strip and instructed civilians to urgently exit the area by moving west.
“The fighting and military advance of the IDF in the Khan Younis area do not allow the movement of civilians through the Salah al-Din axis in the sections north and east of the city. The Salah al-Din Axis constitutes a battlefield, so it is extremely dangerous to reach it!” IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote in Arabic on X.
“The IDF will allow the movement of civilians through the bypass axis located west of Khan Younis.”
Adraee said transportation from the Rafah and Khan Younis area toward Deir al-Balah and the central camps would be available and that the IDF would institute a four-hour pause in military operations in Shaboura area of Rafah to allow in humanitarian aid supplies, effective 10 a.m. through 2 p.m. local time.
The military earlier said it had captured one of the largest stockpiles of Hamas weapons found in northern Gaza so far, containing hundreds of rockets, launchers, rocket-propelled grenades, drones and explosive devices.
The arms cache, hidden near a clinic and a school, was further evidence of Hamas’ “ridiculous use of the residents of Gaza as human shields,” the IDF said.
