Around nine in every 10 people in the Gaza Strip have been displaced at least once since fighting between Israel and Hamas began, AFP reports quoting the UN humanitarian agency.

Andrea De Domenico, head of the United Nations’ OCHA agency in the Palestinian territories, said that around 1.9 million people are thought to be displaced in Gaza.

“We estimate that nine in every 10 people in the Gaza Strip have been internally displaced at least once, if not up to 10 times, unfortunately, since October,” he told reporters in New York and Geneva, speaking from Jerusalem.

“Before we were estimating 1.7 [million] but since that number, we had the operation in Rafah, and we had additional displacement from Rafah,” he said, explaining the increase.

“Then we had also operations in the north that has also moved people,” he added. He said such military operations had forced people to reset their lives, over and over again.

“Behind these numbers, there are people […] that have fears and grievances. And they had probably dreams and hopes; the less and less, I fear today, unfortunately,” De Domenico said.

“People who in the last nine months have been moved around like pawns in a board game.”