Israel orders evacuations in Gaza City as the UN suspends food deliveries to the north due to looting.
The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of two neighborhoods of Gaza City on Tuesday, amid signs of hunger and growing desperation in the northern part of the enclave, at a time when the focus of Israel's offensive has shifted south.
The evacuations came as the World Food Program halted deliveries in the north on Tuesday, describing scenes of chaos as its teams faced looting, hungry crowds and gunfire in recent days.
The heaviest fighting and most intense bombardments have moved south to areas around Khan Younis and Rafah in recent weeks. But the Israeli army's evacuation order on Tuesday for the Zaytoun and Turkmen neighborhoods of Gaza City raised the possibility of further military action in the north.
Northern Gaza has been decimated by four months of bombing, and ongoing fighting there between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters has severely hampered the delivery of aid to the estimated 300,000 people still in the area, of whom the United Nations has said warned that they would face famine.
The WFP had suspended its deliveries for the past three weeks over security concerns, and on Sunday the agency tried to restart them, but “crowds of hungry people” surrounded the first convoy heading to Gaza City, and aid workers were forced to help people to ward off those who try to climb onto the trucks, the organization said in a statement.
Another convoy on Monday “faced complete chaos and violence due to the breakdown of civil order,” the statement added, saying several trucks were looted and a driver was beaten.
The WFP said it did not take the decision to suspend deliveries in northern Gaza lightly, adding that it means “more people are at risk of dying of hunger.”
“WFP is deeply committed to urgently reaching desperate people in Gaza, but safety and security to deliver crucial food assistance – and for the people receiving it – must be ensured,” the statement said.
It cited the “unprecedented level of desperation” witnessed by its teams as evidence of Gaza's “steep slide into hunger” and pointed to a UN report published on Monday that said acute malnutrition in the northern part of the enclave has increased.
Northern Gaza was the original target of Israel's military offensive. As Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza, the army urged civilians to move south for their own safety.
Hundreds of thousands responded to the calls, and more than half of Gaza's population is now crammed into Rafah, living in temporary shelters and tents. But widespread shortages of food and water, coupled with concerns that nowhere in Gaza was truly safe, prompted some of the displaced to return north.
The new evacuation notice issued by the Israeli army on Tuesday told people in the two neighborhoods of Gaza City to move to an area around the coastal town of Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis in the southern part of the enclave. The message was posted in Arabic on social media, but communications networks in Gaza have been severely disrupted, so it was unclear how many people saw it.
Ameera Harouda And Rawan Sheikh Ahmad reporting contributed.