Half a million Palestinians driven to tip of Gaza amid starvation and Israeli bombardment

Associated Press
·1 min read
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More than half a million Palestinians have been displaced and over 35,000 have been killed in Israel’s worst bombardment yet as the population has been driven to the tip of Gaza and is on the brink of starvation, the United Nations says.

Around 450,000 Palestinians were driven out of Rafah in Gaza’s south over the past week, the United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees said Tuesday. There were roughly 1.3 million people sheltering in Rafah before Israel began pushing into the city, which Israel says is the last Hamas stronghold.

The army’s evacuation orders issued Saturday have displaced around 100,000 people so far, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters Monday.

No food has entered the two main border crossings in southern Gaza for the past week. Some 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger, on the brink of starvation, and a “full-blown famine” is taking place in the north, according to the U.N.

Seven months of Israeli bombardment in Gaza have killed more than 35,000 people, most of them women and children, according to local health officials.

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