Palestinians are fleeing districts east of Gaza’s second city, Khan Younis, after Israel issued evacuation orders.
Witnesses reported multiple Israeli attacks in and around Khan Younis overnight and into the morning. A medical source and the Palestinian Red Crescent said eight people had been killed and more than 30 wounded.
Patients and medical staff have also left the European hospital in Gaza after the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry ordered them to evacuate.
The Israeli military itself has not issued an evacuation order for the hospital.
It is reported that the Red Cross has assisted patients in being transferred to another hospital.
Louise Wateridge, an official with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, asked where people could go now that they were again forced to leave their homes.
“In this area, people were already having to survive in heavily damaged, destroyed and structurally unsafe buildings following the military operation at Rafah,” she said.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has issued a statement on its latest operation in Gaza. According to the statement, it is responding to around 20 projectiles fired from the Khan Yunis area towards Israel on Monday.
“During the night, the IDF struck terrorist targets in the area from which the projectiles were fired, including a weapons cache, operations centers, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites,” the report said.
According to the IDF, Hamas “continues to systematically violate international law while using civilian infrastructure and the civilian population as human shields.”
The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad said it carried out the attack on Monday, the largest barrage into Israel from Gaza in months.
Much of Khan Younis was destroyed earlier this year during an ongoing Israeli offensive against Hamas.
The city to which some residents later returned is almost unrecognizable, yet many moved back to seek refuge from the Israeli offensive in Rafah.
Now many people are fleeing again, for fear of another major attack.
