The Israeli army has ordered Palestinians to leave several neighborhoods in the southern city of Khan Yunis, including areas the army has designated as humanitarian zones.
The Palestinian Civil Defense in the region estimated that the order affected 400,000 people displaced in the city, including in the sandy eastern part of Al Mawashi, where Palestinians have been taking shelter in tent cities in recent months, with no infrastructure.
The army said it planned to launch operations against Hamas fighters in parts of Khan Yunis and al-Mawasi, which it claims are using the areas to fire rockets at Israel.
“We were evacuated from the eastern areas. We were told to evacuate and we fled with our children,” Osama Khdei told The Associated Press. “There was no safe place left in the Gaza Strip… We didn’t know where to go, we wandered the streets.”
Another woman collapsed from exhaustion, saying it was her seventh or eighth evacuation. “We are evacuating every day,” she told The Associated Press, clutching her children. “Where is the country? Where is the world? Where is the president? Where are they? Come and see what is happening to us, our children, and what is happening to us.”
Gaza health officials said at least 37 people were killed and 120 wounded in attacks in and around Khan Yunis, and that many more dead and wounded were likely buried under rubble or left by the roadside because ambulances could not reach them.
Local Wafa News Agency report Israeli forces dropped leaflets urging people to evacuate, followed immediately by a series of heavy bombardments. Columns of smoke could be seen above the rooftops of the ruined city.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, injured people flocked to the hospital as an appeal for blood donations was made.
Heavy fighting in the months leading up to Monday’s attack destroyed much of Khan Yunis, but hundreds of thousands of people who had fled other parts of Gaza have returned to take refuge in tents in the east of the city. Images sent from Khan Yunis show Palestinians fleeing the area by any means possible, in cars and donkey carts.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations and other international relief agencies have stressed that no safe places remain in the Gaza Strip, and that even areas designated as humanitarian safe zones remain targets of attack. In an attack on the supposed safe zone of Al-Mawasi earlier this month, the Israeli military said it targeted the leadership of Hamas’ military wing, killing at least 90 people and wounding hundreds.
More than 39,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Hamas militants attacked Israeli territory on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. The Palestinian Health Ministry also said more than 89,000 people had been wounded in a series of heavy Israeli attacks across Gaza in recent weeks.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. aid agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said Israeli forces fired repeatedly at a U.N. convoy heading toward Gaza City on Monday.
“Israeli forces fired heavy gunfire at a UN convoy heading towards Gaza City,” he said, adding that one vehicle waiting in front of an Israeli checkpoint near the Gaza River was hit by five bullets and severely damaged.
“There were no casualties, but our teams had to duck for cover. The teams were traveling in vehicles that were clearly marked UN armored vehicles and were wearing UN vests,” he said, adding that the convoy had been coordinated with Israeli authorities and had approved the move. An IDF spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said: Commented He criticized Lazzarini’s account of the attack, calling it a war crime.
“Gaza has not only become a graveyard for children, it has become a graveyard for international law and a shameful stain on the entire international order,” he said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
