RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into an already crowded town at the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days, according to the United Nations, fleeing Israel’s bombardment of the center of the strip, where hospital officials said dozens were killed Friday.
Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive against Hamas has displaced some 85% of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless also bombed. That has left Palestinians with a harrowing sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.
People arrived in Rafah in trucks, in carts and on foot. Those who haven’t found space in the already overwhelmed shelters have built tents on the roadsides.
“People are using any empty space to build shacks,” said Juliette Touma, director of communications at UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. “Some are sleeping in their cars, and others are sleeping in the open.”
Israel’s widening campaign, which has already flattened much of the north, is now focused on the urban refugee camps of Bureij, Nuseirat and Maghazi in central Gaza, where Israeli warplanes and artillery have leveled buildings.
But fighting has not abated in the north, and the city of Khan Younis in the south, where Israel believes Hamas’ leaders are hiding, is also a smoldering battleground. Militants have continued to fire rockets, mostly at Israel’s south.
The war has already killed over 21,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has left a quarter of Gaza’s population starving.
An additional 187 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip over the past day, Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory, said Friday. The ministry’s death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Israeli officials have brushed off international calls for a cease-fire, saying it would amount to a victory for Hamas, which the military has promised to dismantle. It has also vowed to bring back more than 100 hostages still held by the militants after their Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war. The assault killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
The military says 168 of its soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began.
The U.N. said late Thursday that around 100,000 people have arrived in Rafah, along the border with Egypt, in recent days. The influx crams even more people into one of Gaza’s most densely populated areas.
Israel has told residents of central Gaza to head south, but even as the displaced have poured in, Rafah has not been spared.
A strike Thursday evening destroyed a residential building, killing at least 23 people, according to the media office of the nearby Al-Kuwaiti Hospital.
At the hospital, residents rushed in a baby whose face was flecked with dust and who wailed as doctors tore open a Mickey Mouse onesie to check for injuries.
Shorouq Abu Oun fled the fighting in northern Gaza a month ago and sheltered at her sister’s house, which is located near Thursday’s strike
“We were displaced from the north and came here as they (the Israeli military) said it is safe,” said Abu Oun, speaking at the hospital where the dead and wounded were taken. “I wish we were martyred there (in northern Gaza) and didn’t come here.”
