UN says almost 360,000 people have fled Rafah since evacuation order

Almost 360,000 people have fled the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli army issued the first evacuation orders a week ago, according to UN figures on Monday.

"There's nowhere to go. There's NO safety without a #ceasefire," the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) wrote on social media platform X.

Rafah, which is already overcrowded with internally displaced persons, is seen as the last stronghold of militant Palestinian organization Hamas.

Later on Monday, a UN spokesperson said that one of the world organization's employees was killed in the Gaza Strip after a car was fired upon.

This is the first foreign UN employee to be killed in Gaza, the spokesman said. Another UN employee was injured in the incident. The nationalities and gender of the victims were initially not disclosed.

The car in which the employees were travelling to a hospital was clearly marked as a UN vehicle, the spokesperson said.

In total, almost 200 UN employees have been killed since the beginning of the Gaza war - so far all of them have been Palestinians.

Fierce fighting between Israel's army and armed Palestinians continued on Monday at various locations in the north, south and centre of the coastal strip.

UNRWA's statement added that in northern Gaza, bombardments and further evacuation orders have caused more displacement and "fear for thousands of families."

The military arm of Hamas reported on Telegram about attacks on Israeli troops in various locations, including in Rafah in the south as well as in the refugee neighbourhood of Jabalia and in al-Saitun in northern Gaza.

There were fresh rocket alerts on Monday in Israeli border towns on the edge of the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant spoke with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the situation in the Gaza Strip, according to reports on Monday.

According to Gallant's office, in the phone call the Israeli minister discussed the "developments in Gaza, including [Israel Defense Forces] operations across the strip in the face of terror hotspots, and the precise operation in the Rafah area against remaining Hamas battalions, while securing the [Rafah border] crossing."

Blinken reiterated that the United States remains opposed to a major Israeli ground offensive in Rafah, "where over 1 million people have taken shelter," a US State Department spokesman said.

Israel began its military campaign to eliminate Hamas following the unprecedented October 7 attacks on southern Israel when Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians and, according to latest reports in Israeli media, took round 250 people hostage to the Gaza Strip.

Some 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war so far, according to Gaza's Hamas-controlled health authority.

Israel is being increasingly criticized internationally due to the high number of civilian casualties and the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.