Khan Yunis fighting displaces 180,000

More than 180,000 Palestinians have fled fierce fighting around the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis in four days, the United Nations said Friday, after an Israeli operation to extract captives' bodies from the area.

Recent "intensified hostilities" in the Khan Yunis area, more than nine months into the Israel-Hamas war, have fuelled "new waves of internal displacement across Gaza", said the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA.

It said that "about 182,000 people" have been displaced from central and eastern Khan Yunis between Monday and Thursday, while "hundreds of other people remain stranded in eastern Khan Yunis".

The Israeli military on Monday issued evacuation orders for parts of the southern city, announcing its forces would "forcefully operate" there, including in a area previously declared a safe humanitarian zone.

On Wednesday, Israel said five bodies of captives seized during Hamas's October 7 attack that triggered the war had been recovered from the area.