KHAN YUNIS: Overnight, Israel extended the orders for evacuation from Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian inhabitants and their displaced families while they fled in the dark amid surrounding explosions caused by tank firing.
On Sunday, a day after an Israeli attack on a school in Gaza City killed at least ninety-nine Palestinians, Palestinians who had already been forcibly relocated multiple times by Israeli air strikes were compelled to evacuate Al-Halaa and other northern neighborhoods of Khan Yunis.
“We’re worn out. Zaki Mohammad, 28, who is in the Hamad housing complex in western Khan Yunis, said, “This is the tenth time my family and I have had to leave our shelter. The occupants of two multi-floor buildings were ordered to leave.”
“We are fleeing from one death to the next.”
Four Palestinians were killed and several others injured in an Israeli airstrike near the Khan Yunis market in the city center, according to medics. Residents also reported that two multi-story buildings had been bombed, and smoke was rising from areas where Israeli planes had attacked in the eastern and western parts of the city.
Israel confronts international outrage over the school strike; the UN reports that over 75,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the previous four days.
The soldiers advanced farther into the Al-Jalaa region, which was previously thought to be a somewhat safer location. Israeli military issued further evacuation orders instructing residents and refugees to leave the Khan Yunis neighborhood, warning the remaining Palestinian population that Al-Jalaa would turn into a “dangerous combat zone.”
“You need to go right away to the newly established humanitarian zone for your own protection. The announcement on X stated, “The area you are in is considered a dangerous combat zone.”
Fearful of more fighting and missile strikes, families grabbed their meager possessions and fled the neighborhood. Hundreds of people, mostly from Al-Jalaa’s Hamad neighborhood, packed up whatever they could find and headed out. Some packed clothes, beds, and kitchenware into pick-up trucks, while others just carried their bags.
Some tried to hitch a ride to safer areas, while young men and women escorted senior family members.
Gazans confined: Head of UNRWA
In X, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, stated that “more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza just in the past few days.”
Many individuals fled after the fresh evacuation orders, according to Lazzarini. He remarked, “Some people can only bring their kids with them, and some people carry their entire life in one tiny bag.”
“The Gaza population is stranded and has nowhere to go.”
Residents of Khan Yunis reported that Sunday’s airstrikes by the Israeli army injured multiple patients receiving care at Nasser hospital.
A neighbor named Awad Barbakh claimed, “They were all civilians, and some were shopping in the market when a missile hit and left people lying in the streets.”
Since October 2023, the Israeli offensive in Gaza has claimed the lives of about 40,000 Palestinians, and the number is increasing every day, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. According to officials, citizens have made up the majority of the dead.
According to UN and Palestinian officials, there are no safe zones within the enclave. Israeli forces have repeatedly bombarded areas designated as humanitarian zones, such as Al-Mawasi in western Khan Yunis, where inhabitants were being transferred.
Following the invitation from international mediators for the warring parties to resume negotiations towards a long-sought truce and prisoner-release agreement, calls for a ceasefire and criticism of the bombardment of the Al-Tabieen religious school and mosque, which resulted in almost a hundred casualties, spread throughout the Middle East and beyond.
