© Reuters. Displaced Palestinians keep exterior their tent the place they take shelter, because the battle between Israel and Hamas continues, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, within the southern Gaza Strip December 2, 2023. REUTERS/Saleh Salem
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By Arafat Barbakh and Nidal al-Mughrabi
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza (Reuters) – Underneath aerial bombardment from Israel, folks sheltering within the south of the Gaza Strip after fleeing their properties earlier within the battle mentioned on Saturday that they had nowhere protected to go now.
Town of Khan Younis is the main target of Israeli air strikes and artillery hearth after preventing resumed on Friday following the collapse of a week-long truce. Its inhabitants has swelled in latest weeks as a number of hundred thousand folks from the northern Gaza Strip have fled south.
Some are tenting in tents, others in colleges. Some are sleeping in stairwells or exterior the few hospitals working within the metropolis. A World Well being Organisation official mentioned on Friday that one of many hospitals was “like a horror movie” as tons of of wounded kids and adults waited for therapy.
Abu Wael Nasrallah, 80, scoffed on the Israeli military’s newest order to maneuver additional south to Rafah, bordering Egypt. Kids had been injured in Israeli strikes within the city on Friday.
The message was delivered by way of leaflets dropped from the sky over a number of districts in Khan Younis.
“This is nonsense,” Nasrallah advised Reuters. He had heeded Israeli evacuation orders and moved from the northern Gaza Strip earlier within the battle that broke out on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants crossed into Israel and killed 1,200 folks, principally civilians.
Some 193 Palestinians had been killed for the reason that truce expired, the Gaza well being ministry mentioned on Saturday, including to the loss of life toll of greater than 15,000 Gazans introduced by Palestinian well being authorities.
He and his household would keep put as a result of that they had already misplaced all the things. “There is nothing left to fear. Our homes are gone, our property is gone, our money is gone, our sons have been killed, some are handicapped. What is left to cry for?”
A mom of 4, who gave her identify as Samira, mentioned she had fled south from Gaza Metropolis together with her kids after Israel started bombing there final month. They now shelter with pals in a house west of Khan Younis.
She mentioned Friday night time had been one of the vital terrifying since she arrived: “A night of horror.”
She and different residents mentioned they feared the depth of the bombing in Khan Younis and the close by metropolis of Deir al-Balah meant Israel’s floor invasion of the south was imminent.
One other man, who gave his identify as Yamen, mentioned he and his spouse and 6 kids had fled the north weeks in the past and had been sleeping in a college.
“Where to after Deir al Abalah, after Khan Younis?” he mentioned. “I don’t know where to take my family.”
The U.N. estimates that as much as 1.8 million folks within the Gaza Strip – or practically 80% of the inhabitants – have been compelled to flee throughout Israel’s devastating bombing marketing campaign.
Israel has sworn to annihilate Gaza-based Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 rampage by the militant group, when Israel says gunmen killed 1,200 folks.
(This story has been refiled so as to add the dropped phrase ‘in’, in paragraph 5)
