Israel says 80% of all Palestinians in Gaza are clustered in the territory’s central region
JERUSALEM — Israel says 80 percent of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are now clustered into the territory’s central region after many were driven out of Rafah by Israel’s military offensive there.
Col. Elad Goren, a senior official in the military body overseeing Palestinian civilian affairs, announced the estimate Tuesday while speaking to reporters. He said recent evacuations from the southern city of Rafah, which began in early May, have led many to take shelter in the center.
Goren said Israel has ordered people to move to its self-declared “humanitarian area” along Gaza’s southwest coast and two urban refugee camps in central Gaza. “From our assessment, there are approximately 1.8, 1.9 million people in this area,” he said.
Around 100,000 Palestinians have left the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Palestinian border officials told The Associated Press, and another 300,000 are in the heavily damaged north, per U.N. estimates.
Sam Rose, the director of planning at the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said Tuesday that the agency believes some 250,000 people live in the areas in southern Gaza where Israel has ordered another mass evacuation.
Evacuees have been told to seek refuge in a sprawling tent camp along the coast.
Palestinian terrorists fired a barrage of around 20 projectiles at Israel from Khan Younis on Monday, without causing any casualties or damage.
Over a million Palestinians fled the southern city of Rafah in May after Israel launched operations there.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, in which terrorists stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,900 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
