The Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate part of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday and bombarded the area, killing scores of people and wounding hundreds, local health officials reported, adding to the misery of a city already deeply scarred by nine and a half months of war.
The military said it was moving further into Khan Younis because Hamas was trying to regroup there and had used part of what was designated a humanitarian zone to fire rockets toward Israel. The military also noted that it had warned civilians earlier on Monday, before it began its operations, to leave the “specific areas of Khan Younis,” shrinking the zone it had identified for people displaced from their homes by the war.
The Gazan health ministry said 70 bodies were brought to Nasser Hospital, and at least 200 other people had been wounded, figures that could not be confirmed independently, adding that others were almost certainly buried under rubble. The Palestine Red Crescent said its teams in the area had dealt with at least 12 people who had been killed and 50 wounded.
Mohammed Saqer, the director general of nursing at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said hundreds of injured men, women, children and older people had been brought to the hospital, which lacked mattresses, blankets, syringes and other essentials.
“The situation is appalling,” Dr. Saqer said in an interview, adding that some injuries had necessitated amputations while other people had sustained serious burns.
The Israeli military said it had ordered the evacuation of eastern Khan Younis because it was “about to forcefully operate against” Hamas in the area. The military said it had struck more than 30 sites there, “including in the area from which a projectile was launched toward Nirim in southern Israel” on Monday.
Residents in eastern Khan Younis were told to seek temporary shelter closer to the Mediterranean coast, in an area that Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone, but that aid workers and displaced Palestinians say does not have basics supplies, like enough clean water, for the legions who have fled there.
The military had previously ordered an evacuation of the city but not everyone left, aid workers and residents said, and on Monday the military said that “remaining residents” of the city’s eastern neighborhoods should go to the “adjusted Humanitarian Area in Al-Mawasi.”
“The calls for the temporary evacuation are being communicated to residents through SMS messages, phone calls and media broadcasts in Arabic,” the Israeli forces said.
Gazans have long complained that they do not receive such messages — electric power and cellular service are often out — or that they are confusing.
The military said it would “continue to act against the Hamas terrorist organization, which uses the Gazan civilians as a human shield for its terrorist activities and infrastructure.”
The Israeli military said the evacuation order preceded its strikes on the area. Photographs showed thousands of people trying to flee the area, some on donkey carts and others on foot.
Almost all of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes and many have relocated repeatedly since Oct. 7, when Hamas led an attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people, starting the war.
The military confirmed on Monday that two of the Israeli men kidnapped on Oct. 7 had died in Hamas captivity. The two are Yagev Buchshtab, 35, who was abducted from Kibbutz Nirim along with his wife, Rimon, who was released as part of a hostage deal in November; and Alex Dancyg, who was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz and would have turned 76 on Sunday.
The circumstances of the deaths were being examined “by all professional authorities,” the Israeli military said, though Hamas still holds the bodies. Hamas had announced their deaths in March, saying they had been killed by Israeli fire.
The announcement brings to 46 the number of remaining hostages in Gaza who were seized on Oct. 7 and are believed to be dead, according to the Hostage Families Forum, out of 120, living or dead, who are held there.
More than 39,000 people have been killed in Gaza and nearly 90,000 others have been injured, according to Palestinian health authorities. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but list the bodies of those it has identified, noting whether they were men, women, children or elderly. More than 270 aid workers have been killed during the war, according to the United Nations.
Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman with the main U.N. agency for the Palestinians, UNRWA, said that conditions in the humanitarian zone identified by Israel were “very dire” with a lack of shelter, water, food, medicine and sanitation, and that many civilians who had moved repeatedly from one part of Gaza to another to seek safety were no longer sure where to go.
Khan Younis was the site of a major Israeli military ground operation in the spring aimed at dislodging Hamas’s military wing and destroying Hamas tunnels. At that time, Israel also told residents to flee, and many went south to the city of Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt. Residents who returned to Khan Younis in April said that parts of that city had been so badly damaged as to be almost unrecognizable.
In a separate incident on Sunday, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA, said that Israeli forces shot at a four-car U.N. convoy heading north to Gaza City, hitting one car five times, but causing no casualties.
Ms. Wateridge, who was in the vehicle that was hit, said that bullets had pierced the vehicle while it was stationary, at a holding point in front of the Wadi Gaza checkpoint. She described the incident as terrifying and said she was fortunate to have been sitting in the front passenger seat away from where the bullets penetrated the car.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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