Palestinians stream into a southern Gaza town as Israel expands its offensive in the center

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into an already crowded town at the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days, fleeing Israel’s bombardment of the center of the strip, as a senior U.N. official on Friday criticized Israel for continuing to impose “severe restrictions” on access to aid.

The renewed criticism came a week after the U.N. Security Council demanded an immediate increase in humanitarian deliveries to the besieged territory.

Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive against Hamas has displaced some 85% of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless also bombed.

That has left Palestinians with a harrowing sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.

Nearly the entire population is fully dependent on outside humanitarian aid, said Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. A quarter of the population is starving because too few trucks enter with food, medicine, fuel and other supplies — sometimes fewer than 100 trucks a day, according to U.N. daily reports.

Drone footage taken Friday showed a vast camp of thousands of tents and makeshift shacks set up on what had been empty land on Rafah’s western outskirts next to U.N. warehouses.

People arrived in Rafah in trucks, in carts and on foot. Those who did not find space in the already overwhelmed shelters put up tents on roadsides slick with mud from winter rains.

With the new arrivals, the town and its surrounding area are now packed with some 850,000 people, more than triple the normal population, according to U.N. figures.

“Some are sleeping in their cars, and others are sleeping in the open,” said Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications.

In other developments, South Africa launched a case at the United Nations’ top court accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and asking the court to order Israel to halt its attacks.

It was the first such challenge made at the court over the current war. Israel swiftly rejected the filing “with disgust.”

The two nations have a poor relationship. Many South Africans, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, have compared Israel’s policies toward Palestinians with South Africa’s past apartheid regime of racial segregation.

Israel’s widening Gaza campaign, which has already flattened much of the north, is now focused on the urban refugee camps of Bureij, Nuseirat and Maghazi in central Gaza, where Israeli warplanes and artillery have leveled buildings.

But fighting has not abated in the north, and the city of Khan Younis in the south, where Israel believes Hamas’ leaders are hiding, is also a smoldering battleground. Militants have continued to fire rockets, mostly at Israel’s south.

The war has already killed over 21,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Its count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israeli officials have brushed off international calls for a cease-fire, saying it would amount to a victory for Hamas, which the military has promised to dismantle.