RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Tens of thousands of Palestinians have poured into an already crowded city at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip in recent days, according to the United Nations, fleeing Israel’s bombardment of the center of the strip, where hospital officials said dozens were killed on Killed Friday.

Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive against Hamas has displaced about 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, sending throngs of people seeking refuge in Israeli-designated safe areas but which the military has also bombed. That has left Palestinians with the distressing feeling that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.

People came to Rafah in trucks, carts and on foot. Those who can no longer find space in the already overcrowded emergency shelters have set up tents on the sides of the roads.

“People are using any empty space to build shacks,” said Juliette Touma, communications director at UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. “Some sleep in their cars, others sleep outside.”

Israel’s expansion campaign, which has already leveled 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 in the north has not abated, and the southern town of Khan Younis, where Israel believes Hamas leaders are hiding, is also a smoldering battlefield. Militants continued to fire rockets, mainly into southern Israel.

The war has already killed over 21,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has left a quarter of Gaza’s population starving.

Another 187 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip last day, Ashraf al-Qidra, the health ministry spokesman in the Hamas-controlled territory, said on Friday. When it comes to the death toll, the ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Israeli officials have rejected international calls for a ceasefire, saying it would amount to a victory for Hamas, which the military has vowed to crush. It has also promised to return more than 100 hostages still held by the militants after their Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war. Around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attack.

The military says 168 of its soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began.

A stream of displaced people

The United Nations said late Thursday that around 100,000 people had arrived in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, in recent days. The influx is pushing even more people into one of Gaza’s most densely populated areas.

Israel has told residents of central Gaza to move south, but even as displaced people poured in, Rafah was not spared.

According to the media office at the nearby Al-Kuwaiti Hospital, a strike on Thursday evening destroyed a residential building and killed at least 23 people.

At the hospital, residents brought in a baby whose face was covered in dust and who was crying as doctors ripped open a Mickey Mouse onesie to check him for injuries.

Shorouq Abu Oun fled fighting in the northern Gaza Strip a month ago and sought refuge in her sister’s house, which is close to Thursday’s strike

“We were driven out of the north and came here when they (the Israeli military) said it was safe,” Abu Oun said at the hospital where the dead and wounded were taken. “I wish we were martyred there (northern Gaza) and not come here.”

Strikes in central Gaza

Residents said many houses were hit in Nuseirat and Maghazi overnight on Friday and there was heavy fighting in Bureij. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah said it received the bodies of 40 people, including 28 women, who were killed in strikes.

“They strike everywhere,” said Saeed Moustafa, a Palestinian from Nuseirat. “Families are being killed in their homes and on the streets. They are being killed everywhere.”

Israel announced this week that it is expanding its ground offensive into the central Gaza Strip, targeting a belt of crowded neighborhoods built to house some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war over the creation of Israel.

Israel blames Hamas for the high death toll and accuses it of infiltrating the civilian population. Israel has uncovered weapons treasures and underground tunnel shafts in residential buildings, schools and mosques.

But even Israel’s closest ally, the United States, has called on it to take more precautions to spare civilians and allow more aid. Israel says it is warning civilians to leave areas it attacks in various ways and has worked to make its evacuation orders more precise.

ISRAEL EVALUATES STRIKE ON REFUGEE CAMP

Civilians are bearing a staggering toll in the fighting. On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the Maghazi camp killed at least 106 people, according to hospital records, one of the deadliest of the war.

In a preliminary review of the attack, the Israeli military said buildings near the target were also hit and that “unintentional harm was likely caused to additional uninvolved civilians.” In a statement on Thursday, the military said it regretted the harm to civilians and said it would learn from the incident.

Eylon Levy, a government spokesman, told Britain’s Sky News that the wrong ammunition had been used in the attack, resulting in “a regrettable mistake.”

“That shouldn’t have happened,” he said.

Israel rarely comments on specific attacks and has rarely admitted guilt, even when civilians have been killed.

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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg contributed to this report from Tel Aviv, Israel.

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