The Israeli military has issued new evacuation orders in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis that further expand into an area where displaced Palestinians have been forced to shelter while killing dozens in an attack on a hospital in the centre of the enclave.
It said in an announcement on Saturday that staying in the area in Khan Younis had “become dangerous” due to rockets being fired by Palestinian fighters.
“The adjustment is being carried out in accordance with precise intelligence indicating that Hamas has embedded terrorist infrastructure in the area defined as a humanitarian area,” the military claimed, adding that it was about to “forcefully operate” there.
The latest order comes a week after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for eastern parts of Khan Younis and began a new ground invasion months after launching an offensive there.
The Khan Younis invasion displaced at least 180,000 Palestinians in the first four days since it was launched, with many having to move without their belongings, according to the United Nations.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said people are supposed to be going to “safer” areas despite repeated international warnings that nowhere is safe.
“But what we’re seeing on the ground and judging from the patterns of how it happened, this is more of an enforced internal displacement for an already displaced population in the southern part of Khan Younis who had already fled the eastern part of Khan Younis as the Israeli military expanded its operations,” he said.
Mahmoud said an air attack killed many people inside a home in the area on Saturday morning before the Israeli military ordered the latest mass evacuation through leaflets, SMS, phone calls, recorded audio messages, and Arabic-language media broadcasts.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that 14 bodies had arrived at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis since the morning.
An Al Jazeera correspondent also reported that Israeli artillery shelling has been targeting the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis, and one Palestinian was killed and many others wounded in an Israeli drone attack on a cemetery in the southern city.
‘New massacre’ in attack on field hospital
The Israeli military launched a huge attack on a field hospital established in a school in Deir el-Balah, killing at least 30 Palestinians and wounding dozens, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
The Government Media Office in Gaza said three missiles were fired from fighter jets at the Khadija School in what it described as a “new massacre”. The enclave’s civil defence organisation said the school, the latest of many to be hit this month alone, was housing 4,000 displaced Palestinians.
“We hold the Israeli occupation and the US administration fully responsible for the continuation of these massacres against the displaced people and civilians,” the media office said.
Using its usual justification for the school attack, the Israeli military claimed in a statement it was being used as a “Hamas command and control centre” that housed weapons.
The Israeli military is also continuing its deadly attacks on areas across the besieged enclave, including Rafah in the south.
It confirmed early on Saturday that it hit “dozens of targets” in the past day, including the Zeitoun neighbourhood in the north’s Gaza City, which has been a repeated target of attacks for months.
UN agencies have condemned Israel’s policy of mass displacement of Gaza’s civilian population and military attacks on areas previously declared as humanitarian “safe zones” by Israel.
The Israeli military has killed at least 39,258 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the start of the current conflict in October, with at least 90,589 people wounded and thousands missing, according to the Health Ministry.
The ministry reported on Saturday that it was no longer possible to restart the European Gaza Hospital, which has been out of service, despite the urgent need for it amid repeated Israeli attacks on hospitals across Gaza.
“[This] makes things completely conducive to the spread of the polio virus and other diseases that has been spreading like wildfire among the displaced,” it said.
