More than 180,000 Palestinians have been displaced following four days of fighting near the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, the United Nations (UN) announced today.
About 182,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee the central and eastern areas of Khan Younis since Monday, while the "intensification of hostilities" is causing "new waves of internal displacement in Gaza", the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs warned in a statement.
The UN agency also said that "hundreds of other people remain trapped in the east" of the city.
The Israeli army said it had "eliminated around 100 terrorists" in Khan Younis since it began its operation four days ago.
On Thursday, the armed forces said they had recovered from Khan Younis the bodies of five Israelis, including two soldiers and two reservists, who were killed following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and who had been taken to the Gaza Strip.
The head of the Israeli army, General Herzi Halevi, said the bodies of the prisoners were removed from underground tunnels in a "hidden location".
"We were close to these bodies before, but we did not know how to reach them" until this week, he added in a statement released today by the army.
Witnesses and rescue teams assured that intense fighting continued today in the Khan Yuonis area.
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil, which resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 111 are still being held in Gaza, according to the army.
In response, Israel launched an offensive that has left at least 39,175 people dead, according to figures from the Hamas-led Gaza government's Health Ministry, which gives no indication of the number of civilians and fighters killed.
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