Israel sends tanks back into Khan Younis area, 70 killed after new evacuation order

[Pelican Press 0]

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******* sends tanks back into Khan Younis area, 70 ******* after new evacuation order

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Ari Rabinovitch and Hatem Khaled

CAIRO/JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) -******* sent tanks back into the greater Khan Younis area after ordering evacuations of some districts it said had been used for renewed attacks by militants and at least 70 Palestinians were ******* by ******** *****, Gaza medics said on Monday.

The Palestinians were ******* by tank salvoes in the town of Bani Suhaila and other towns fringing the eastern side of Khan Younis, with the area also bombarded from the air, they said.

Residents of the densely built-up area of southern Gaza said the tanks advanced for more than two kilometres (1.2 miles) into Bani Suhaila, forcing residents to flee under *****.

“It is like doomsday,” one resident, who only identified himself as Abu Khaled, told Reuters via chat app. “People are fleeing under *****, many are ***** and wounded on the roads.”

The Gaza health ministry said the ***** included several women and children and that at least 200 other people had been wounded. The Gaza ministry does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its ****** tallies.

The ******** military said in a statement evacuation orders to the population in eastern Khan Younis resulted from intelligence information indicating militants were ******* rockets from those areas and ****** was attempting to regroup.

“Since this morning, the IAF and IDF artillery forces have struck more than 30 ******* infrastructure sites in Khan Younis, including in the area from which a projectile was launched toward Nirim in southern ******* earlier today,” the military said.

Around 400,000 people were living in the targeted areas and dozens of families had begun to leave their houses, ************ officials said, adding they were not given time to get out of harm’s way before the ******** strikes began.

Some families fled on donkey carts, others on foot, carrying mattresses and other belongings.

The ************ Red Crescent Society said two of its clinics located in eastern Khan Younis had been knocked out of operation because of the new offensive.

At Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital, some people stood outside the morgue to bid farewell to ***** relatives.

“We are tired, we are tired in Gaza, every day our children are martyred, every day, every moment,” said Ahmed Sammour, who lost several relatives in bombings of eastern Khan Younis.

“No one told us to evacuate. They brought four floors crashing down on civilians,” Sammour added.

In nearby Deir Al-Balah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, an ******** airstrike hit a tent used by local journalists inside Al-Aqsa Hospital, ******** one of them and wounding two other people, the ******-run Gaza government media office said.

The new ****** raised the number of ************ journalists ******* in the ******** offensive to 163, it added.

EVACUATION ORDERS

Earlier on Monday, the ******** military said it had issued new evacuation orders due to renewed ************ militant attacks, including rockets launched from the targeted areas in eastern Khan Younis. The orders did not include health institutions, Palestinians said.

The military said it was adjusting the boundaries of a designated humanitarian zone in coastal Al-Mawasi – to the west of Khan Younis – to keep the civilian population away from areas of combat with ******-led ************ militants.

The Gaza Civil Emergency Services said *******’s new orders showed it had downsized the humanitarian-designated areas in southern and central areas, where 1.7 million people were sheltering, to 48 sq km (18.5 sq miles) from 65 sq km (25 sq miles) in the past.

The Palestinians, the ******* Nations and international relief agencies have said there is no safe place left in Gaza.

Health officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis urged residents on Monday to donate blood because of the large number of casualties being rushed to the medical centre.

“A family, including children, were all torn to pieces while they were sleeping,” said one man who arrived at the hospital in an ambulance bearing the bodies.

******* has vowed to eradicate ****** after militants ******* 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages in a cross-border ******** on Oct. 7, 2023, according to ******** tallies.

The ****** toll among Palestinians in *******’s retaliatory offensive since then had reached at least 39,006 as of Monday, Gaza health authorities said.

A ceasefire effort led by Qatar and Egypt and backed by the U.S. has so far fallen short because of disagreements over terms between the combatants, who blame each other for the impasse.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Hatem Khaled in Gaza; editing by ********** Schmollinger, Sharon Singleton, Gareth Jones, Mark Heinrich and Alex Richardson)

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