Israeli military launches new offensive on Gaza's Khan Younis amid mass displacement

The Israeli military has launched a new ground offensive in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, targeting dozens of sites after issuing new evacuation orders for exhausted Palestinians.

The attacks followed what the regime claimed is intelligence indicating that fighters from the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement still operate there despite repeated incursions.

The army announced on Friday that the offensive is being carried out by the 98th Division, which withdrew from the city for the second time just last month, following a week-long onslaught.

It said troops were searching for Hamas fighters above and below ground while locating weapons and infrastructure.

The military added that more than 30 airstrikes were carried out in Khan Younis as ground forces with the 98th Division pushed into the city in the southern Gaza Strip over the past day.

Israel targets ‘safe zones’ again

Reports, meanwhile, said fatalities occurred in an Israeli military attack on al-Mawasi “safe zone” near Khan Younis.

This came as Palestinians from eastern Khan Younis were fleeing toward al-Mawasi, which had been a designated humanitarian zone.

Thousands of Palestinians left the heavily destroyed eastern districts of Khan Younis on Thursday, carrying essentials like small gas cylinders, mattresses, tents, backpacks and blankets.

Qassam Brigades claims attack on Israeli forces in Rafah

Meanwhile, the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said in a statement that its fighters had attacked a building in the Tal as-Sultan neighborhood of western Rafah, where a group of Israeli troopers was holed up.

It added that it targeted nine soldiers with two TBG shells, killing or wounding them.

The statement added that Palestinian fighters observed Israeli army helicopters landing nearby to evacuate the dead and wounded.

August 8: ‘Axis of Resistance’ operations against Israeli occupation

Resistance groups in Palestine and across the region continue their operations against the Tel Aviv regime and its Western backers.

Israel bombs nine Gaza City school shelters in eight days

Additionally, an international human rights organization says the Israeli army has stepped up its bombardment of schools used as shelters for internally displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, killing and injuring hundreds of them.

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a report that these attacks over the past eight days have killed 79 Palestinians and injured 143 others, mostly women and children.

The report says that the actual casualty figures are likely much higher, due to the “loss of others under the rubble who cannot be recovered due to the lack of appropriate equipment for rescue crews.”

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.

Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.

So far during the military onslaught, the regime has killed at least 39,699 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents. Another 91,722 Palestinians have sustained injuries as well.

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