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Israel reduces humanitarian safe zone in Gaza to only 11 percent: UNRWA

Sunday, 18 August 2024 7:44 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 18 August 2024 7:44 AM ]

Displaced Palestinians leave an area in east Khan Yunis towards the west, after the Israeli military issued a new evacuation order for parts of the city, in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 8, 2024. (Photo by AFP)

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees says Israel’s new evacuation orders in the Gaza Strip have shrunk to only 11 percent of the so-called humanitarian zone for Palestinians in the besieged territory.

UNRWA released the figure in an X post on Saturday, a day after the Israeli military gave Gaza residents sheltering in the safe zone in north Khan Yunis and east Deir al-Balah an order to leave in just a few hours.

The occupation’s army also issued another evacuation order for Maghazi and Zawayda refugee camps in central Gaza.

“Thousands of families continue to be displaced in Gaza as Israeli authorities issue new evacuation orders,” UNRWA said.

“The so-called ‘humanitarian zone’ has shrunk to just 11% of the Gaza Strip, causing chaos and fear among the displaced. They have nowhere safe to go.”

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees also renewed its call for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Separately on Saturday, UNRWA Communications Officer Louise Wateridge said in an X post that Israel’s repeated displacement orders have left people “trapped in this endless nightmare.”

Meanwhile, rescue services in Gaza estimated that Israel’s latest shrinking of the safe zone in Gaza puts the lives of some 450,000 displaced Palestinians at risk amid a worsening humanitarian disaster there.

Israel using displacement as weapon to escalate collective punishment against civilians: Hamas

A senior Hamas official says the Israeli regime is using displacement as a weapon to escalate collective punishment against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Hamas resistance group called the Israeli evacuation orders “a direct continuation of the policy of collective punishment of Gazans,” saying Israel is using dispossession as a weapon against civilians.

People in Gaza say that everywhere designated a safe place has already been hit by the Israeli military and that there is no safe place in the Palestinian territory.

Israel waged its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after Hamas carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 40,074 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 92,537 others.

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