Apart from deaths of over 65,000 Palestinians with the daily death toll from the air strikes, a UN report suggested the displacement of 250,000 Palestinians last month alone from Gaza City, with 60,000 fleeing the new assault in 72 hours earlier this week, while the Israeli military claimed that as many as 450,000 civilians had left Gaza City, which was once a commercial and cultural hub, and has been reduced to uninhabitable ruins.
Israeli artillery, tanks and warplanes continued to strike Gaza City through Thursday and UN officials warned of new waves of mass displacement, while long columns of residents attempted to flee south towards areas marked by Israel as humanitarian zones, burdened with household belongings and children, The Guardian reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls from senior generals and intelligence officials not to proceed with the Gaza offensive, while commentators accused him of prolonging the war to prevent early elections that could undermine his hard-right coalition.
A UN commission of inquiry accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, citing leadership incitement, although Israel dismissed the findings as distorted, while Gaza’s health ministry said at least 79 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours, mostly in Gaza City.
Prices for transport soared, forcing many to walk on the narrow coastal road, while aid agencies observed families heading to unsafe areas where overcrowding and shortages of food, medicine and shelter intensified humanitarian distress.
The Israeli military insisted that Gaza City remained a Hamas stronghold and pointed to drone surveillance and intelligence reports to suggest large-scale evacuations, while forces expanded control over eastern suburbs and moved into Sheikh Radwan and Tel al-Hawa, giving them positions to advance on central and western districts where many displaced civilians continued to seek shelter.
Large swathes of Gaza City, once a bustling centre of trade and culture, were levelled into rubble, and the majority of those who stayed had already been displaced multiple times during the prolonged conflict.
The scale of devastation was underscored by inflammatory rhetoric from Israeli political figures, with Israel’s far-right finance minister describing Gaza as a real estate opportunity for redevelopment, while the military opened a second route south through the middle of the Strip for 48 hours in an attempt to encourage a mass exodus.
Thousands of civilians streamed through the corridor under bombardment, moving amid crowds and explosions, while humanitarian organisations described the conditions awaiting them in the south as entirely unsuitable to host the vast displaced population.
UNICEF officials warned that the designated humanitarian zones were unprepared, unsafe and already overcrowded with displaced families, half of them children, while international experts continued to classify the food shortages in northern Gaza as famine, compounding the crisis.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, declared their readiness to intensify fighting against Israeli forces, and the Israeli military reported the deaths of four of its soldiers from a roadside bomb in Rafah, while other incidents included drone interceptions over Eilat and a deadly attack at the West Bank’s border crossing with Jordan.