Some 250,000 Palestinians forced to flee Gaza Strip town after new Israeli evacuation order, what’s new?

CHundreds of Palestinians were forced to flee the city of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Stripwhich was subjected to Israeli bombardment on Tuesday morning after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders.

Some 250,000 people have left the town of Khan Yunis, in the southern half of the Gaza Strip, following new evacuation orders issued by Israel while the city is suffering new bombings, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported on Tuesday.

Many of the evacuees have fled west towards the coast, UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told a teleconference for UN-accredited reporters in Geneva from Gaza.

Extreme fear and anxiety gripped the population after the evacuation order

Witnesses reported multiple attacks in and around Khan Yuniswhere eight people were killed and more than 30 injured, according to a medical source and the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The bombing followed a rocket salvo launched by Islamic Jihad, an Islamist group that has fought Israel alongside Hamas.

The rockets were launched against Israeli communities bordering Gaza “in response to the crimes of the Zionist enemy against our Palestinian people,” according to the Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli military said it detected about “20 projectiles coming from the Khan Yunis sector” in Gaza, and claimed that some were intercepted.

Earlier on Monday, Israel ordered the evacuation of al-Qarara, Bani Suhaila and other towns in Rafah and Khan Yunis.

More than a million people were displaced to Rafah, in the far south of Gaza, ahead of the Israeli ground incursion into the city, which began on May 7.

“Extreme fear and anxiety gripped the population after the evacuation order,” said Ahmad Najjar, a resident of Bani Suhaila. “There is a huge displacement of people.”

What has the fighting in the Gaza Strip been like?

Other parts of the Gaza Strip remained shaken by ongoing fighting, nearly nine months after the devastating conflict began.

Witnesses and civil defense agencies reported Israeli shelling in Rafah and the Nuseirat refugee camp (center).

In Gaza City’s Shujaiya district, where fighting is raging, witnesses reported intense Israeli tank fire.

An AFP journalist reported Israeli helicopters firing on houses in Shujaiya, while Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezedin al Qassam brigades, were fighting in that district and in Rafah.

The Israeli army said it had “eliminated numerous terrorists” in its raids in Shujaiya, where its airstrikes killed “approximately 20” fighters.

It also reported the death of one soldier in southern Gaza, raising the death toll of its soldiers in the ground offensive to 317.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently declared that the “intense phase” of the war was ending, said Sunday that forces “are operating in Rafah, Shujaiya, everywhere in the Gaza Strip.”

“This is a difficult fight fought above ground (…) and underground,” in tunnels, he said.

The conflict erupted on October 7, when Islamist militants killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 in southern Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data. More than 300 Israeli soldiers were among the dead.

The Israeli army estimates that 116 people remain captive in Gaza, 42 of whom are believed to have died.

In response, Israel launched an offensive that has already left at least 37,900 dead, most of them civilians, in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health of the Hamas government, which has been in power in this territory since 2007. The vast majority of the dead are women, children and adolescents.

Meanwhile, negotiations to reach a truce agreement have stalled.

Director of Gaza City’s Al Shifa hospital released

On Monday, Israeli authorities released Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, along with dozens of other detainees who returned to Gaza for treatment.

Israeli strikes have turned much of the hospital, the largest in Gaza, into rubble.

Israel accuses Hamas of using Al Shifa and other Gaza hospitals as screens to conceal its military operations, a claim rejected by the Islamist movement.

Abu Salmiya said he suffered “severe torture” while in detention since November.

“Detainees were subjected to physical and psychological humiliation” and “several inmates died in interrogation centres and were deprived of food and medicine,” he said.

Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service said it had decided to release the prisoners in conjunction with the army “to make room in detention centres” and said it had only released less dangerous prisoners.

Netanyahu nevertheless ordered the agency to investigate the release and submit a report to him on Tuesday.

Netanyahu called the release of the hospital director “a grave mistake.”

But Abu Salmiya said no charges were ever brought against him.

The UN and aid agencies have expressed alarm over the dire humanitarian situation and the risk of famine among Gaza’s 2.4 million people.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said Israeli authorities had delivered less than half of the 115 humanitarian assistance missions planned for northern Gaza.

At a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah, pharmacist Sami Hamid warned of an increase in skin infections, especially among children “due to the heat and lack of clean water.”

He said there was also an increase in cases of hepatitis, possibly linked to the wastewater that flows past the tents.