450,000 Palestinians Have Fled Gaza City

(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Gaza's civil defence agency said Friday that 450,000 Palestinians have fled Gaza City since Israel began its offensive to seize the territory's largest urban centre.

"The number of citizens displaced from Gaza to the south has reached 450,000 people since the start of the military operation on Gaza City in August," said Mohamed al-Mughayir, an official of the rescue force.

The Israeli military warned Friday it would operate with "unprecedented force" in Gaza City, telling residents to flee as it presses its ground offensive.

Israel has pummelled Gaza City with air strikes and tank fire in its bid to seize it, nearly two years into the war that has devastated the Palestinian territory and left Gaza City gripped by a UN-declared famine.

The assault comes ahead of a planned move by several Western governments, including Britain and France, to recognise a Palestinian state at a UN summit next week.

The military launched its ground assault on Tuesday and has for days been telling residents to head south, but many Palestinians say the journey is prohibitively expensive and they do not know where to go.

"For several days, we've been trying to evacuate to the south, but we haven't been able to find any means of transport," Khaled al-Majdalawi, a displaced Palestinian in western Gaza City told AFP, describing "intense and continuous" shelling.

The UN estimated at the end of August that about 1mn people were living in Gaza City and its surroundings.

The Israeli military has urged Palestinians to head to a "humanitarian area" in Al-Mawasi on the coast.

Israel first declared the area a safe zone early in the war, but has carried out repeated strikes on it since then.

Nivin Ahmed, 50, fled south from Gaza City to the central city of Deir el-Balah on Thursday, walking with seven family members.

"We walked more than 15km (9 miles), we were crawling from exhaustion," she told AFP.

"My youngest son cried from fatigue. We took turns dragging a small cart with some of our belongings." Mona Abdel Karim, 36, said she had been unable to secure transport south and had been sleeping on Al-Rashid road for two nights with her family waiting for a driver.

"I feel like I'm about to explode. We can't walk on foot - my husband's parents are elderly and sick, and the children are too weak to walk," she said.

Israeli fire killed at least 33 people across the territoryFriday, 18 of them in Gaza City, according to a tally of figures given by Gaza hospitals contacted by AFP.

The US-backed offensive on Gaza City came as a UN probe accused Israel of committing "genocide" in the Gaza Strip, saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials had incited the crime City Gaza Genocide

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