Displaced Palestinians flee again amid major Israeli push

Mass exodus in central Gaza, while main southern city faces heavy bombardment

 

Tens of thousands of already displaced Palestinian families took flight again in a new mass exodus on Dec 28 in central Gaza, where Israeli forces mounting a major advance pounded areas already teeming with those driven out of the north.

Farther south, Israeli forces struck the area around a hospital in the heart of Khan Younis, the Gaza Strip's main southern city, where residents feared a new ground push into territory crowded with families made homeless in 12 weeks of war.

Israel has escalated its ground war in Gaza sharply since just before Christmas despite public pleas from its closest ally the United States to scale down the campaign in the closing weeks of the year. The main focus of fighting is now in central areas south of the wetlands that bisect the Strip, where Israeli forces have ordered civilians out as their tanks advance.

Tens of thousands of people fleeing the huge Nusseirat, Bureij and Maghazi districts of central Gaza were heading south or west on Dec 28 into the already overwhelmed city of Deir al-Balah along the Mediterranean coast, crowding into hastily built camps of makeshift tents.

"Over 150,000 people - young children, women carrying babies, people with disabilities and the elderly have nowhere to go," the main United Nations body operating in Gaza, UNRWA, said in a social media post decrying what it called "forced displacement" under Israeli evacuation orders.