I was under the impression it was a synonym for area bombing - e.g. throwing a bunch of bombs at a place to inflict damage in a general way. As opposed to having a very specific target.

What's your definition?

Tens of thousands of people being displaced seems pretty general to me.

How does that compare to other conflicts? Tossing around numbers without any context doesn't do anyone any good. There are four ongoing "Major Wars" with 10,000+ fatalities in the last year, which undoubtedly displaced orders of magnitude more people

Many people have no idea what they're talking about when speaking outside of their areas of expertise. So, yes, it's very possible that those people have something very different from mass bombing in mind.

"people" are not one group. when a group uses some specific words, you can ask what those people mean. General 'people' have different definitions, and sometimes use words as weapons.