Hundreds of Palestinians flee to southern Gaza ahead of new Israeli campaign

Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa Agence France-Presse The Israeli army says it wants to dislodge Hamas fighters from the city of Khan Younès.

Agence France-Presse in Khan Younès

Published at 2:24 p.m.

• Middle East

Hundreds of Palestinians fled neighborhoods in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Sunday, where the Israeli army is planning new operations, the day after a raid on a school considered one of the deadliest since the start of its war against Hamas.

Triggered on October 7 by an attack of unprecedented scale by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil, the war has caused tensions throughout the region but also a surge in violence in the occupied West Bank, where an Israeli civilian was killed on Sunday.

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army says it wants to dislodge Hamas fighters from Khan Younis, a major city that has already been the target of several major campaigns.

Early Sunday, Israel called on civilians to leave the area of ​​al-Jalaa, previously designated as a humanitarian zone, pushing back onto the roads families who have often been displaced several times in more than ten months of war.

The army said Hamas had “established a terrorist infrastructure” in the area and was “preparing to carry out operations.”

“With this new evacuation order, we don’t know where to go,” said Sami Chahada, 55, who had already left the city once after his daughter was killed in a bombing.

“Blood-shredded bodies”

In Gaza City, relief efforts are still underway the day after an Israeli strike that, according to the Civil Defense in Gaza, killed 93 Palestinians, including women and children, in a school housing displaced people, sparking an international outcry.

“It will take us another two days to identify the bodies that were torn to pieces,” said Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.

The Israeli army said that the school was being used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad (another armed Palestinian movement) to “carry out attacks” against its soldiers, and claimed to have eliminated “at least 19 terrorists” there.

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Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007 — and which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union — after the attack on its soil that killed 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

Of the 251 people kidnapped, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom are dead, according to the army.

The Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza has left at least 39,790 dead, according to data from the health ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza government, which does not detail the number of civilians and fighters killed.

Israeli troops regularly return to areas from which they had withdrawn in the face of the resurgence of Palestinian fighter units. On Sunday, new bombings were carried out on Khan Younis.

According to AFPTV footage, Palestinians flocked to the city’s Nasser hospital after a strike, carrying bodies and wounded people in blood-stained T-shirts.

“They were all civilians shopping when the missile fell,” said witness Awad Barbakh.

More than 75,000 people have been displaced in the southwest in recent days, according to the UN refugee agency (UNRWA).

Other areas in the centre and north of the besieged Palestinian territory were targeted overnight. At least two people were killed, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Attack in the West Bank

In this context, Hamas called on Sunday for the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency session to end “the genocide.”

The war threatens to spread in the region after the assassination on July 31 in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, attributed to Israel, and the death on July 30 of the military leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, Fouad Shokr, killed in an attack near Beirut claimed by Israel.

Iran and its allies have threatened Israel with a “severe” response.

In the occupied West Bank, where tensions have risen sharply, the Israeli army indicated that an Israeli civilian in his twenties had been killed in an attack by “terrorists”, still wanted, on vehicles.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who headquarters in the West Bank, will visit Russia from August 12, where he is due to meet Vladimir Putin, and then Turkey, to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On Thursday, the mediating countries – Qatar, the United States and Egypt – called for the resumption of talks on a truce in Gaza on August 15, associated with the release of the hostages. Israel agreed, but Hamas has still not responded.

A ceasefire in Gaza would constitute a “decisive step” towards de-escalation, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz argued on Sunday in a telephone conversation with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu.