Displaced Palestinians from areas in east Khan Yunis arrive to the city as they flee after the Israeli army issued a new evacuation order for parts of the city and Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, July 2024 .AFP
Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City's Shujaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, said AFP reporters.
Ten days after Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war's "intense phase" was winding down, the Israeli army rained down air strikes and artillery fire on the Shujaiya district.
The occupation army -- which issued an evacuation order for Shujaiya a week ago -- on Sunday did the same for a larger area near Khan Younis and Rafah in the south.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road there, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere in the bombed-out wasteland.
Israel’s order on Monday for people to leave the eastern half of Khan Younis — the territory’s second-largest city — has triggered the third mass flight of Palestinians in as many months, throwing the population deeper into confusion, chaos and misery as they scramble once again to find safety.
About 250,000 people live in the area covered by the order, according to the United Nations. Many of them had just returned to their homes there after fleeing Israel’s invasion of Khan Younis earlier this year — or had just taken refuge there after escaping Israel's offensive in the city of Rafah, further south.
Fleeing European Hospital
The order also prompted a frantic flight from European General Hospital, Gaza's second-largest hospital, located in the evacuation area. The facility shut down after staffers and more than 200 patients were forcibly evacuated overnight by Israel and on Tuesday, along with thousands of displaced who had sheltered on the hospital grounds, according to the staff and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had a medical team there.
Hisham Mhanna, the ICRC spokesperson in Gaza, said some families dragged patients in their hospital beds through the streets for up to 10 kilometres (6 miles) to reach safety. Ambulances moved others elsewhere as staff rushed out valuable equipment, including X-ray and ultrasound machines and endoscopy devices now so scarce, said a nurse, Muhammad Younis.
Hours after ordering the evacuation, the Israeli army said the hospital was not included in that order. But the staff said they feared a repeat of previous Israeli raids on other Gaza hospitals.
“Many hospitals have come to rubble and have been turned into battlefields or graveyards,” Mhanna said.
On Tuesday, cars loaded with personal belongings streamed out of eastern Khan Younis, though the number of those fleeing was not immediately known. The new exodus comes on top of the 1 million people who fled Rafah since May, as well as tens of thousands who were displaced the past week from a new Israeli offensive in the Shijaiyah district of northern Gaza.
“We left everything behind,” said Munir Hamza, a father of three children who on Monday night fled his home in an eastern district of Khan Younis for the second time. “We are tired of moving and displacement. ... This is unbearable.”
Netanyahu rejected a US media report saying his generals were urging a Gaza truce, stressing on Tuesday that "this will not happen".
The Israeli army said Wednesday that "operational activities continue throughout the Gaza Strip."
The Gaza Civil Defence Agency said seven people were killed when a strike hit a family house north of Gaza City.
Another Israeli strike killed three people in a car at Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Deir al-Balah area, said an AFP reporter.
Air strikes also hit homes in Rafah, according to the government media office.
The Hamdan family — around a dozen people from three generations — fled their home in the middle of the night after the Israeli military ordered an evacuation from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
They found refuge with extended relatives in a building further north, inside an Israeli-declared safe zone. But hours after they arrived, an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday afternoon hit their building in the town of Deir al-Balah, killing nine members of the family and three others.
In all, five children and three women were among the dead, according to hospital records and a relative who survived.
In its latest update, the Palestinian health ministry said Wednesday at least 28 people were killed by Israeli shelling in 24 hours, raising the death toll to 37,953 since the war started, mostly children and women.
A ministry statement added that 87,266 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began.
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