The number includes several thousand sick and wounded Palestinians who were medically evacuated, Al Jazeera reports according to The Washington Post, who cited the Palestinian embassy in Cairo.

The rest reached Egypt with assistance from foreign embassies or through a private Egyptian travel agency, which charges large sums to coordinate their exit, The Post added.

“Most remain in limbo, with no legal status and nowhere else to go,” it reports. “They are members of a new diaspora of Palestinians, a people already haunted by memories of displacement.”