GAZA: Thousands of Palestinians were fleeing on foot on Wednesday in a surge away from the fighting and intense bombardment in Gaza as Israel said it was tightening the "stranglehold" around the city.
People walked south from Gaza, many with nothing but the clothes they wore, while combat raged over a month of sparking the deadliest ever war in Gaza.
According to the health ministry in the besieged territory, the Israeli military campaign has killed more than 10,500 people, almost half of them children.
The pace of Palestinian civilians fleeing south from northern Gaza has accelerated as Israel's air and ground campaign has intensified, according to UN observers.
About 15,000 people fled on Tuesday, compared to 5,000 on Monday and 2,000 on Sunday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, as another surge was underway on Wednesday.
"It was so scary," Ola al Ghul, among the masses of Gaza civilians displaced in the month-old war, said on Tuesday.
"We held our hands up and we kept walking. There were so many of us, we were holding white flags," she added.
Israel claimed its ground forces were advancing in pursuit of the fighters who have a deep network of tunnels and underground bases.
"Israeli troops are tightening the stranglehold around the city of Gaza," Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said late on Tuesday.
Military analysts warned of weeks of gruelling house-to-house fighting ahead in Gaza, with around 30 Israeli soldiers already killed in the offensive.
The operation is hugely complicated for Israel because of the hostages who are believed to be held inside a vast tunnel network.
In densely packed Gaza, where more than 1.5 million people have fled their homes in a desperate search for safety, the suffering is immense.
The World Health Organization said an average of 160 children are killed every day in Gaza by the war.
"The level of death and suffering is hard to fathom," WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said.
Palestinian media office said on Telegram that several cemeteries in Gaza had "no more space for burials", while the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said most of the territory's sewage pumping stations were shut.
OCHA says Israel has ordered all 13 hospitals still operational in northern Gaza to evacuate patients.
"All over Gaza, helpless people are losing their family members, homes and their own lives, while world leaders fail to take meaningful action," medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said.
In its statement, MSF detailed how a staff member was killed on Monday along with his family in Gaza's Shati refugee camp when the area was bombed.
Israel has hammered Gaza with more than 12,000 air and artillery strikes and sent in ground forces that have effectively cut it in half. — AFP
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