Philippe Lazzarini, Head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has stated in a post on X that more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza in the past few days.
“Some are only able to carry their children with them, some carry their whole lives in one small bag,” he added.
“They are going to overcrowded places where shelters are already overflowing with families. They have lost everything and need everything. Unlike in other wars, the people of Gaza are trapped and have nowhere to go.”
Philippe Lazzarini
This came as the Israeli military ordered more evacuations in southern Gaza after a deadly air strike on a school-turned-shelter in the north killed more than 100 Palestinians.
Hundreds of families carrying their belongings in their arms left their homes and shelters in Khan Younis early on Sunday, seeking elusive refuge.
They were heading west towards al-Mawasi and north towards Deir el-Balah, already overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Israel has repeatedly ordered mass evacuations as its troops have returned to heavily damaged areas where they had previously battled Palestinian fighters. The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people has been displaced by the 10-month war, often multiple times.
“We’re exhausted. This is the 10th time I and my family have had to leave our shelter,” said Zaki Mohammad, 28, who lives in the Hamad housing project in western Khan Younis, where the occupants of two multistorey buildings were ordered to leave.
“People are carrying their belongings, their children, their hopes and their fears and running towards the unknown, because there is no safe place,” he told reporters.
He added, “We are running from death to death.”
A Much Worse Reality
Salim Oweis, a Communications Officer at UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa office, who recently returned from Gaza, told a news agency that the reality is much worse than what people see on TV screens.
“We don’t see on the screens the depth of the deaths and destruction, the depths of people suffering and their daily struggles for the basics of the basics,” he said.
He added, “So the situation there is really dire.”
“I was based in Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis and also north of Gaza, and to be honest, the more you move, the more suffering and destruction you see. The situation is really beyond description.”
Salim Oweis
He described the impact of repeated attacks on schools as devastating.
“Those schools are not schools any more. They are very basic shelters for so many families, and we have unfortunately seen in the last 10 months so many of those attacks on schools, on hospitals, on civilian infrastructure that children and families rely on, which makes life even more miserable.”
Salim Oweis
Dr James Smith, an emergency physician who returned from a medical mission to Gaza in June, also disclosed that he never saw anything like what is going on in the enclave over the course of his career as a doctor working in the humanitarian system.
He said that what is happening in Gaza “requires a whole new vocabulary.”
“There is no way to effectively describe what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza,” he told the news agency, adding that the Israeli strikes on a Gaza City school sheltering people is the latest Israeli “massacre” in the enclave.
“The definition of a massacre is a deliberate brutal barbaric attack on a large group of people. Typically a massacre provokes or prompts a widespread condemnation and action.
“It is inconceivable to me that we are talking about hundreds of massacres that have happened in the course of the last 10 months.”
Dr James Smith
He added, “It is absolutely wild to me that the US government can publicly state ‘deep concern’ while providing military support for the violence that Israelis enacting against the Palestinian people.”
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