More than 200,000 people – nine percent of Gaza’s population – have been displaced over the past week in the wake of Israeli evacuation orders, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said Monday.
“Humanitarian partners tracking population movements in Gaza estimate that new directives issued by Israeli authorities on Saturday and Sunday affected parts of Rafah, Khan Younis and Deir al Balah where a combined 56,000 people had been sheltering,” it added.
Only around 14 percent of areas in Gaza “are not under evacuation orders,” the Commissioner-General for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said in a post on X on Sunday.
The latest round of displacement “comes at a time when water, sanitation and hygiene conditions are being further eroded in Gaza, with infectious diseases on the rise,” UNOCHA said.
“Earlier this month, the polio virus was detected in wastewater samples in Gaza. Though no cases have been recorded, it is crucial that conditions on the ground enable aid organizations to respond quickly and at scale, including by ensuring that children can receive vaccines. The World Health Organization announced last week that it is sending 1 million polio vaccines to Gaza,” UNOCHA added.
