450,000 displaced from Rafah since May 6

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said yesterday that nearly 450,000 people have been displaced from Rafah since Israel began issuing evacuation orders for the south Gaza city eight days ago.

“People face constant exhaustion, hunger and fear. Nowhere is safe. An immediate ceasefire is the only hope,” the agency said on X, as Israeli tanks forged deeper into eastern Rafah, reaching some residential districts.

“The tanks advanced this morning west of Salahuddin road into the Brzail and Jneina neighbourhoods. They are in the streets inside the built-up area and there are clashes,” one resident told Reuters via a chat app yesterday.

Hamas’s armed wing said it had destroyed an Israeli troop carrier with an Al-Yassin 105 missile in the eastern Al-Salam neighbourhood, killing some crew members and wounding others.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, meanwhile, said Israel’s operations in Rafah have set back efforts at trying to reach a ceasefire in talks that are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt, although it would continue to negotiate.

The UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) will hold hearings tomorrow and Friday to discuss new emergency measures sought by South Africa over Israel’s attacks on Rafah, the tribunal said.

Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 35,173 Palestinians and wounded 79,061 since October 7, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said yesterday. There have been 82 Palestinians killed and 234 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry statement added.

Palestinian people are moving to empty tracts of land, including Al-Mawasi, a sandy strip bordering the coast that Israel has designated as a humanitarian area. Aid agencies have warned the zone lacks sanitary and other facilities to host an influx of displaced people.

Fighting across the strip has intensified in recent days, including in the north, with the Israeli military heading back into areas where it had claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago.

In the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City in the north, bulldozers demolished clusters of houses to make a new road for tanks to roll through into the eastern suburb.

In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced Palestinians 75 years ago, residents said Israeli forces were trying to reach as deep as the camp’s local market under heavy tank shelling.