Nidal Al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) – Israel extended an evacuation order for Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip overnight, forcing tens of thousands of Palestinian residents and displaced families to flee in darkness amid the roar of tank artillery explosions.
The Israeli military said it was attacking because fighters from the Hamas group, which ruled the Gaza Strip before the war, had been using the area as a base for attacks and rocket launches.
On Saturday, Israeli forces bombed a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, killing at least 90 people, according to the Civil Defense, sparking international condemnation.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant command center, killing 19 militants, a claim both groups denied as a pretext.
Evacuations were ordered for central, eastern and western neighborhoods of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, the largest in the 10-month conflict, two days after tanks returned to the eastern part of the city.
The notice was posted on X and sent to residents’ mobile phones via text and voice message: “For your own safety, you must evacuate immediately to a newly established humanitarian zone. The area you are in is considered a dangerous war zone.”
The Israeli military said it had struck around 30 Hamas military targets in the past 24 hours, including military installations, anti-tank missile launch sites and weapons storage facilities.
Tens of thousands forced to evacuate overnight
According to the United Nations, most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been forced from their homes, leaving much of the narrow strip of land a rubble wasteland.
Palestinian and UN officials say no areas are safe in the exclave, and areas designated as humanitarian zones, such as al-Mawasi in western Khan Yunis where residents were relocated, have been repeatedly bombarded by Israeli forces.
Tens of thousands of people left their homes and shelters in the middle of the night, heading for Mawashi in the west and Deir al-Balah in the north, which are already crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
“We are exhausted. This is the 10th time my family and I have left the shelter,” said Zaki Mohammed, 28, who lives in Hamad housing estate in western Khan Yunis, where residents of two multi-storey buildings have been told to evacuate.
“People are fleeing with their possessions, their children, their hopes and fears into the unknown, with nowhere safe,” he told Reuters via a chat app. “We are fleeing from death to death.”
Israel launched an offensive into Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages, according to an Israeli tally.
Since then, around 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to the Health Ministry.
Gaza health officials say most of the dead are civilians, but Israel says at least a third are combatants. Israel says it has lost 329 soldiers in Gaza.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal Al-Mughrabi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
