Number of Palestinians fleeing to southern Gaza up sharply, UN says

The pace of Palestinian civilians fleeing the combat zone in northern Gaza has picked up as Israel’s air and ground campaign there intensifies, UN monitors say. About 15,00 people fled on Tuesday, compared to 5,000 on Monday and 2,000 on Sunday, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The civilians are able to move during a four-hour window set daily by the Israeli military that assures safe passage from Gaza City and its surroundings to the south. Most of those fleeing are children, the elderly and people with disabilities, the UN agency says. Many arrived on foot with minimal belongings.

In a new development, some of those fleeing report that they had to cross Israeli checkpoints to reach the south and that they had witnessed some arrests by Israeli forces. Others have said they had to walk past Israeli tanks with raised hands while waving white flags.

The densely populated northern area of Gaza, specifically Gaza City and adjacent urban refugee camps, are the focus of Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians remain in the combat area, many sheltering at hospitals or UN schools. Some said they were deterred from moving south because of dire humanitarian conditions in the evacuation zone and ongoing Israeli airstrikes across Gaza, including the south.

Israel has accused Hamas of seeking to keep civilians in the northern part of Gaza to use them as human shields.