Israel murders 70 Palestinians as Gaza death toll surpasses 39,000

The Israeli military has launched new deadly attacks on Khan Yunis minutes after it ordered residents to evacuate east of the southern Gaza City.

The Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday that at least 70 people were killed in Israeli air raids and artillery shelling in Khan Yunis’ eastern neighborhoods, which were designated a humanitarian safe zone.

The ministry added that more than 200 injured people, including serious cases, have arrived at the medical facility, which is located in Khan Yunis.

The ministry said in a statement it received more than 1,200 appeals for help from besieged families asking to be rescued.

“This morning, the Israeli occupation army began a new aggression against Khan Younis Governorate committing crimes against humanity through indiscriminate bombing of citizens’ homes and groups of displaced people in the area,” the statement said.

The medical facility which is the last remaining hospital in southern Gaza has been receiving a rising number of casualties, including children, since this morning when the Israeli forces started their air and ground attacks, giving the residents no time to follow their evacuation orders.

At least 39,076 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced.  

The bodies of the Khan Yunis victims arrived at Nasser Hospital, the Al Jazeera report said.

Bani Suheila, Qizan an-Najjar, Abasan al-Kabira, Khuza’a, and al-Qarara were among the districts targeted by the Israeli military, it added.

Hamas denounces Israeli assault 

Hamas denounced the Israeli assault and said it would not deter Palestinians from remaining “steadfast in their land.”

“We call upon the international community and the United Nations to urgently intervene to stop the systematic Zionist killing of our people, who are facing a genocide,” Hamas said in a statement on its Telegram channel.

“We affirm that our people will remain steadfast, and the resistance will remain committed to confronting this criminal enemy that seeks to expel our people and obliterate our national cause.

“Gaza will remain unbreakable until the occupation is defeated on the path to freedom, return, and self-determination,” it said.

The carnage came shortly after the occupation forces dropped evacuation leaflets onto Khan Yunis’ eastern neighborhoods, giving people no time to flee.

Displaced Palestinians said the area of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza is already full after Israel ordered Palestinians in eastern Khan Yunis to move there.

“Even the sidewalks are full of people and tents,” Youssef Abu Taimah, from the town of al-Qarara in Khan Younis, told AFP after his family found no space in al-Mawasi. “We are tired and fed up. Enough of this displacement and migration.”

Ahmed al-Bayouk, a 53-year-old from Khan Yunis, said: “We barely settle for a few days before the army comes, bombs, displaces us and destroys more.”

“Where should we go? Every place is at risk of bombing.”

The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee earlier told residents in Khan Yunis that “remaining in that zone has become dangerous.”

“The army will act forcefully … and therefore calls on the residents remaining in the eastern neighborhoods of Khan Yunis to evacuate immediately and temporarily towards the humanitarian zone created in al-Mawasi,” he said, referring to the refugee camp where a recent Israeli aerial assault killed 90 people and wounded almost 300 others.

Scores of Palestinians killed, wounded in Israeli attack on Khan Younis refugee camp

More than 70 people have been killed and 300 other wounded by Israeli air strikes on the al-Mawasi refugee camp near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

MSF doctor describes ‘the horror’ in Khan Yunis

Describing a day at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Javid Abdelmoneim, medical team leader for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said that having worked in mass casualties around the world failed to prepare him for “the horror” in Gaza.

“Four to five injured people came in: some of them first-aid responders. Amongst them was a boy who wasn’t breathing, so we tried to revive him, but the nurse looked at us and asked, ‘Why are we responding to him if he can’t breathe? We have to save other lives.’ No one had the heart to call it and move on to the next one. He was someone’s child,” he said.

“But we had to move on to the next, and then the next, and this continued for another four and a half hours,” he added.

“In the emergency department, there was blood everywhere on the floor and I had to kneel to see the patients on the floor. Patients were sprawled everywhere because there were no beds left. I could feel my knees getting wet from the blood. At the same time, more and more patients were coming in.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Civil Defense said the Israeli evacuation order affected more than 400,000 Palestinians.

Israel unleashed a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

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