Residents in Southern Gaza Scramble for Safety, Basic Needs

The breakdown of public order in southern Gaza is accelerating as Israel’s military offensive dislodges Hamas’s control of the enclave, threatening aid deliveries to Palestinians who now fear robberies and looting while reporting a rise in starvation and disease.

In a sign of the growing desperation for tens of thousands of displaced civilians, people in Khan Younis—a southern city that has doubled in population since residents fled there from bombed-out Gaza City—broke into the United Nations’ warehouse and took food supplies. That left the U.N. with nothing to distribute there Thursday.