More evacuations ordered in west of strip, 11 weeks into war that has now killed nearly 1% of people in Gaza
Israel is expanding its ground offensive in Gaza, ordering new evacuations in the west of the strip, as UN security council negotiations over a resolution intended to increase the flow of humanitarian supplies stretched into another day.
Israel’s military told people to leave their homes in al-Bureij, an urban refugee camp. It also said extra ground troops would head to fight in southern Khan Younis. Both areas were originally declared safe for civilians fleeing from the north.
Eleven weeks into the conflict nearly 85% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, and more than 20,000 people killed, most of them women and children.
That toll amounts to nearly 1% of Gaza’s population before the war began. Thousands more dead are buried under rubble across devastated towns and cities.
Overall, about a third of the structures in the strip have been destroyed or damaged, the Associated Press reported. “Gaza is now a different colour from space. It’s a different texture,” said Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center, who has used satellite images to map the destruction.
Those Palestinians who have survived weeks of intense aerial bombardment are starving and ravaged by disease, the United Nations has warned, mostly crammed into overcrowded shelters and sprawling tented settlements, where there is no clean water and little sanitation.
About a quarter of the population – half a million people – already face catastrophic hunger, and with Gaza under blockade that number is expected to climb fast. The entire population faces “an imminent risk of famine”, the UN warned.
“It doesn’t get any worse,” Arif Husain, the chief economist for the UN World Food Programme, told the AP. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.”
Despite the gravity of the crisis, a UN security council resolution intended to boost the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza has been delayed for a week by negotiations on wording, as diplomats sought to avoid a veto from the US, Israel’s staunchest ally.
Late on Thursday the US said it was ready to support a version with substantial amendments, including the removal of a call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities”.
