Hundreds of Palestinian patients forced to flee the European Hospital and tent camps for the displaced in Khan Younis have emptied as the Israeli army ordered an immediate evacuation of eastern areas of Gaza’s second-largest city.
For nearly nine months, Israel’s war on Gaza has forced Palestinians to run from place to place in search of pockets of safety in the besieged Strip.
Israel’s latest evacuation order applied to 250,000 displaced people in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest city, as it carries out renewed attacks in southern Gaza.
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The order was issued as fierce fighting traps Palestinians in Rafah, also in southern Gaza, and the Shujayea neighbourhood in Gaza City in the north.
This explainer has everything you need to know about what’s happening in Khan Younis.
Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, has told the world body’s Security Council the number of displaced people in the Gaza Strip had now reached 1.9 million.
As we previously reported, the UN estimated that up to 250,000 people have been impacted by the Israeli military order for people to leave al-Qarara, Bani Suhaila and other localities near the southern city of Khan Younis.
“Over one million people have been displaced once again, desperately seeking shelter and safety, [and] 1.9 million people are now displaced across Gaza,” Kaag told the 15-nation council, expressing deep concern about the latest evacuation orders in the area of Khan Younis.
“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering. Their home life shattered, their lives upended. The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery,” Kaag added.
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She said that not enough aid was reaching the war-ravaged territory and the opening of new crossings, particularly to southern Gaza, was necessary to avert a humanitarian disaster.
Kaag said the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt should be reopened, and she also pleaded with the international community to do more to fund relief efforts.
At least two Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli gunfire during fighting that erupted after the Israeli army stormed Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports.
The Israeli army said it launched the operation after a shooting near a settlement, which are illegal under international law.
A settler at an outpost near the Har Bracha settlement was slightly wounded by gunfire that the Israeli army said came from deep within Nablus.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, Israel, Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon exchanged at least 7,400 attacks across the border from October 7 to June 21.
Israel conducted about 83 percent of these attacks, totalling 6,142 incidents, and killed at least 543 people in Lebanon. Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,258 attacks, which killed at least 21 Israelis.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese group says on Telegram that it has “achieved a direct hit” on the Jal al-Allam military site in northern Israel, striking it with mortar shells.
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire since Israel launched its war on Gaza in the wake of the deadly Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7.
And the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group says it has targeted an Israeli army vehicle with an explosive device near al-Salem Mosque in eastern Gaza’s Shujayea neighborhood, where fierce clashes are going on.
Separately, the group said on Telegram that its fighters fired a barrage of mortar shells at Israeli soldiers and vehicles in western Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.
