Sharjah 24 – AFP: More than 180,000 Palestinians have fled fierce fighting around the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis in four days, the United Nations said Friday, after an Israeli operation to extract captives' bodies from the area.
Recent "intensified hostilities" in the Khan Yunis area, more than nine months into the Israel-Hamas war, have fuelled "new waves of internal displacement across Gaza", said the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA.
It said that "about 182,000 people" have been displaced from central and eastern Khan Yunis between Monday and Thursday, while "hundreds of other people remain stranded in eastern Khan Yunis".
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.
According to UN figures, the vast majority of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the fighting.
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