Anika Begay
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) – Israel extended evacuation orders in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip overnight, forcing tens of thousands of Palestinian residents and displaced families to flee in the dark as the sounds of tank shelling echoed around them.
The Israeli military said it attacked militants from the Hamas group, which administered Gaza before the war, who used those areas to stage attacks and launch rockets.
An Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on Saturday killed at least 90 people, according to the civil defense service, sparking an international outcry.
The Israeli military said it struck a command post of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, a charge the two groups rejected as a pretext, and killed 19 militants.
In Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, the evacuation order covered the central, eastern and western districts, becoming one of the largest such orders in the 10-month conflict, two days after tanks returned to the eastern part of the city.
The announcement was posted on X and in text and audio messages to residents’ phones: “For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the newly created humanitarian zone. The area you are in is considered a dangerous combat zone.”
Philippe Lazzarini, director of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that the people of Gaza are trapped and have nowhere to go.
“Some are only able to carry their children, others carry their entire lives in a small bag. They go to overcrowded places where the shelters are already full of families. They have lost everything and they need everything,” she said.
The Israeli military said it had hit about 30 Hamas military targets in the previous 24 hours, including military facilities, anti-tank rocket launchers and weapons depots.
The Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said fighters fired mortar shells at Israeli forces who had gathered in eastern Khan Younis.
Later on Sunday, an Israeli air strike near the Khan Younis market in the city center killed four Palestinians and wounded several others, medics said.
Lines of smoke rose from areas where Israeli warplanes carried out strikes in the eastern and western parts of the city. Residents said two multi-story buildings were bombed.
Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive on Gaza since the war broke out last October, and the death toll is rising daily, Gaza’s health ministry says.
Gaza health officials say most of the casualties are civilians, but Israel says at least a third are combatants. Israel says it has lost 329 soldiers in Gaza.
Israel began its assault on Gaza after Hamas fighters swept into southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts.
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE FORCED TO LEAVE DURING THE NIGHT
According to the United Nations, most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes, with their narrow strip of land largely reduced to a wasteland of rubble.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in the enclave. Areas designated as humanitarian zones, such as Al-Mawasi in western Khan Younis, where residents were sent, have been shelled several times by Israeli forces.
Tens of thousands of people abandoned their homes and shelters in the dead of night, heading west towards Mawasi and north towards Deir Al-Balah, already overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
“We are exhausted. This is the tenth time my family and I have had to leave our shelter,” said Zaki Mohammad, 28, who lives in the Hamad residential complex in western Khan Younis, where the occupants of two multi-story buildings have been ordered to leave.
“People are carrying their belongings, their children, their hopes and fears and running into the unknown, because there is no safe place,” he told Reuters via a chat app. “We are running from death to death.”
(Reporting and editing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; editing by Kevin Liffey and Angus MacSwan)
