Israel bombs Khan Yunis again, forcing thousands to flee Gaza

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been forced to move from one place to another in the Strip for nine months, at the pace imposed by the attacks of the Israeli occupation troops. Amid army bombardments, Khan Yunis in the south is once again the scene of an exodus of thousands of people (up to 250,000, according to UN estimates) after the military, which has killed 37,925 Gazans since October, according to official figures, began to apply pressure from the eastern part of this town, which it had already held subjugated for four months. At the same time, clashes with Palestinian factions are intensifying in other parts of the enclave, some of which were already considered under control months ago.

The armed forces struck several targets in Khan Yunis, the second largest city in Gaza, from where, according to military spokesman Avichay Adraee, the Palestinian resistance fired around twenty rockets on Monday. During the night from Monday to Tuesday, “fighter aircraft, in cooperation with the Southern Command, attacked terrorist targets in the area, which yesterday witnessed the launching of some 20 rockets towards (Israeli) cities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Among the targets attacked were a weapons depot, operational apartments and other terrorist structures,” Adraee said on his account on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

Earlier on Monday, the Israeli government issued a new order for the forced displacement of residents of around 20 locations east of Khan Yunis, where it borders the border fence with Israel, and west of the Mediterranean coast. Israel considers these locations unsafe for residents.

The strikes and the order to move the population come after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, according to his office, that Israel is “moving toward the end of the elimination phase of the Hamas terrorist army and will continue to attack its remnants.”

“Just weeks after people were forced to return to devastated Khan Yunis, Israeli authorities have issued new evacuation orders for the area,” the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said in a statement. The agency estimates that 250,000 people will have to flee the area “although nowhere is safe in Gaza.” Many had arrived from neighbouring Rafah, the main focus of Israeli attacks in the past two months.

In another ongoing dance of health centres besieged by troops, the European Hospital in Khan Yunis has been left practically empty due to the need to evacuate patients and workers, who have to flee due to the threat of the Israeli military, warns the World Health Organisation (WHO). On Tuesday afternoon there were only three patients left in the facilities, said Rik Peeperkorn, representative of that UN agency in Palestine, while calling for the evacuated hospital not to suffer damage, reports Reuters. Local reporters have shown images of the transfer of wounded and sick people.

The Israeli army has said that the orders issued for the population to move towards the west of Gaza do not affect the inmates and workers of the European Hospital. Previously, it had denied that there was an order to evacuate hospitals in Khan Yunis, as happened last February with the Al Naser complex shortly before it was attacked by the military.

Israel’s latest order to expel the population, which the UN considers illegal, creates a “heartbreaking, horrific and incredibly difficult” situation, said Sam Rose, UNRWA’s director of planning from the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip, speaking to Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera. “It is yet another chapter of misery for these hundreds of thousands of people” who “have mostly been displaced several times. Some had just returned from Rafah, where they were displaced a few weeks ago,” Rose said, adding that the area of ​​Al Mawasi where they are being sent is “overcrowded”, with no space for new tents, access to water, infrastructure or sanitation. Because the order is “urgent”, the citizens “know that if they do not leave within 24 hours, the worst awaits them.”

Meanwhile, clashes between the military and Palestinian armed resistance groups are continuing in other parts of the enclave, where at least 25 Gazans and two Israeli soldiers have been killed in the last 24 hours, up to midday on Tuesday, according to official figures from both sides. The Al Araby television channel broadcast images of an attack in Gaza City on Tuesday, where a bread stand was seen destroyed with traces of blood, without specifying the number of victims. The Shujaiya neighbourhood in the east of the capital of the enclave continues to be the scene of fighting. There, last December, Israeli soldiers killed three hostages of that nationality when they were carrying a white flag in an attempt to regain freedom.

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