Israeli forces near major city in southern Gaza as civilians panic

Conditions in the city are grim, with little access to running water and sanitation. People are sleeping in the open and aid workers have largely stopped distributing water and flour because of the intensity of the fighting and Israeli bombing, UN officials say.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 20,000 people have taken refuge in a training center in the city designed to house a tenth of that number.

According to the United Nations, Gazans are being pushed into an area that covers less than a third of the enclave.

“The level of human suffering is unbearable,” International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric, who visited Gaza on Monday, said in a speech. rack. She added: “It is unacceptable that civilians do not have a safe place to go in Gaza, and with a military siege there is currently no adequate humanitarian response.”

Before the conflict, nearly 90,000 people were registered in the Khan Younis refugee camp, one of eight run by the United Nations in Gaza. The camps were initially set up to accommodate many of the refugees 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, which broke out when five Arab countries invaded after Israel declared its independence.

They have since become permanent homes, and the Khan Younis camp is in practice part of the wider metropolitan area.

Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner, Vivian Yee, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Courtney Brooks, Iyad Abuheweila, Abu Bakr Bashir, Pieter Bakker, Talya Minsberg, Karoun Demirjian, Arijeta Lajka And Alexander Cardia.