“Yesterday, I was walking around the Al-Mawasi zone, that people in Rafah are being told to move to,” he said, also speaking from Rafah.
“More than 100,000 people have fled Rafah in the last five days and the stream of displacement continues.
“Shelters already lined Al-Mawasi’s sand dunes and it’s now becoming difficult to move between the mass of tents and tarpaulins.
AFP journalists in the Gaza Strip on early Friday witnessed artillery strikes on Rafah on the territory’s southern border with Egypt.
Gaza’s bloodiest-ever war began following Hamas’s unprecedented Oct 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has conducted a retaliatory offensive that has killed more than 34,900 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.