The Israeli military has launched new deadly attacks on Khan Yunis minutes after it ordered residents to evacuate east of the southern Gaza City. Mohamed Saqer, the official spokesman of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said on Monday that at least 45 people were killed in Israeli air raids and artillery shelling in Khan Yunis’ eastern neighborhoods, which were designated a humanitarian safe zone.
The latest massacre takes the death toll in Gaza to over 39,000 since October last year, not counting thousands of bodies that remain buried under the rubble of bombed out refugee centers, hospitals, schools and residential buildings.
The medical facility which is the last remaining hospital in southern Gaza has been receiving a rising number of casualties, including children, since early Monday morning when the Israeli forces started their air and ground attacks, giving the residents no time to follow their evacuation orders.
At least 39,051 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced. The bodies of the Khan Yunis victims arrived at Nasser Hospital, the Al Jazeera report said.
Bani Suheila, Qizan an-Najjar, Abasan al-Kabira, Khuza’a, and al-Qarara were among the districts targeted by the Israeli military, it added.
Hamas denounced the Israeli assault and said it would not deter Palestinians from remaining “steadfast in their land.” “We call upon the international community and the United Nations to urgently intervene to stop the systematic Zionist killing of our people, who are facing a genocide,” Hamas said in a statement on its Telegram channel.
“We affirm that our people will remain steadfast, and the resistance will remain committed to confronting this criminal enemy that seeks to expel our people and obliterate our national cause. “Gaza will remain unbreakable until the occupation is defeated on the path to freedom, return, and self-determination,” it said.
The carnage came shortly after the occupation forces dropped evacuation leaflets onto Khan Yunis’ eastern neighborhoods, giving people no time to flee.
Displaced Palestinians said the area of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza is already full after Israel ordered Palestinians in eastern Khan Yunis to move there. “Even the sidewalks are full of people and tents,” Youssef Abu Taimah, from the town of al-Qarara in Khan Younis, told AFP after his family found no space in al-Mawasi. “We are tired and fed up. Enough of this displacement and migration.”
Ahmed al-Bayouk, a 53-year-old from Khan Yunis, said: “We barely settle for a few days before the army comes, bombs, displaces us and destroys more.” “Where should we go? Every place is at risk of bombing.”
The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee earlier told residents in Khan Yunis that “remaining in that zone has become dangerous.” “The army will act forcefully … and therefore calls on the residents remaining in the eastern neighborhoods of Khan Yunis to evacuate immediately and temporarily towards the humanitarian zone created in al-Mawasi,” he said, referring to the refugee camp where a recent Israeli aerial assault killed 90 people and wounded almost 300 others.
