GAZA: The United Nations refugee agency said the number of people forcibly displaced stood at a record 117.3 million as of the end of last year, warning that this figure could rise further without major global political changes, Reuters reports.

“These are refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, people being forced away by conflict, by persecution, by different and increasingly complex forms of violence,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “Conflict remains a very, very deep driver of displacement.”

In Gaza, Israel’s bombardment and ground campaign have caused around 1.7 million people, nearly 80 per cent of the Palestinian enclave’s population, to become internally displaced, many of them multiple times.

Grandi warned that the possible crossings of Gazans into Egypt from the southern border town of Rafah to escape Israel’s military offensive would be catastrophic.

“Another refugee crisis outside Gaza would be catastrophic on all levels, including because we have no guarantee that the people will be able to return to Gaza one day,” Grandi said.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that a UN report accusing the country of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza is “ridden with lies and blood libels”, Al Jazeera reports.

“The report describes a fictional reality in which decades of terror attacks have disappeared, there are no continuous rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, and this is not a democratic country defending itself from a terror assault,” the ministry said in a statement, according to The Times of Israel.