An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building near the main medical center in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, killing at least seven people, hospital officials and witnesses said.
As dust from Wednesday’s attack billowed up a street near Nasser Hospital, people ran in all directions — some running toward the destruction and others away. Later, civil defense rescuers and passersby waded through pieces of cement and twisted metal, looking for people who might have been buried.
Nasser Hospital is in the western part of the city. There have been repeated attacks on Khan Younis, Rafah and al-Mawasi in the south of the enclave, all of which had previously been designated as humanitarian “safe zones” by Israel.
The Israeli military’s evacuation order this week for Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest city, affected around 250,000 people, according to the United Nations.
Displaced families driven from eastern Khan Younis have struggled to find places to live in overcrowded shelters and open spaces in the western parts of the city. Wednesday’s airstrike hit an area that also includes a school that has become a shelter for displaced people, many of whom live in makeshift tents.
“We were sitting in this tent, three people, and we were surprised by the rubble and the dust,” said Jalal Lafi, who was displaced from Rafah.
“The house was bombed without any warning, hit by two missiles in a row, one after the other,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the rubble, his hair and clothes covered in gray soot.
Andrea De Domenico, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories, said Gaza is “the only place in the world where people cannot find a safe haven and cannot get out of the way of battle”. line.” Even in so-called safe areas there is shelling, he told reporters on Wednesday.
An Israeli airstrike on Tuesday killed a prominent Palestinian doctor and eight members of his family, hours after they complied with military orders to evacuate their home and move to the Israeli-designated safe zone.
The European Hospital in Khan Younis was placed out of service after Israeli forces shelled several areas of the site and medical personnel were forced to evacuate patients and transport what remained of devices and equipment, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said only 15 of 36 hospitals are partially operational.
De Domenico said: “Right now, we estimate that nine out of every 10 people in the Gaza Strip have been internally displaced at least once, if not up to 10 times, unfortunately, since October.”
He said 1.9 million people were “internally displaced multiple times.”
The amount of food and other supplies reaching Gaza has plummeted since Israel’s Rafah offensive began two months ago, causing widespread hunger and fears of famine.
“It’s an unbearable life,” said Anwar Salman, a displaced Palestinian. “If they want to kill us, let them do it. Let them drop a nuclear bomb and wipe us out. We are fed up. We’re tired. We are dying every day.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
