War between Israel and Hamas: Life and death in Gaza’s “safe zone”

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building next to the main medical center in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, wounding at least seven people, hospital authorities and witnesses said Wednesday.

Nasser Hospital is located in the western part of the city, within the humanitarian “safe zone” designated by Israel, where Palestinians are supposed to go according to Israeli military maps. latest Israeli evacuation order The United Nations estimates that around 250,000 people were affected in large parts of Gaza earlier this week.

As dust from Wednesday’s attack swirled through a street near Nasser Hospital, an Associated Press employee filmed people running in all directions – some toward the destruction, others away. Men carried two boys who appeared to be injured. Later, civil defense rescue workers and passersby picked their way over chunks of cement and twisted metal, searching for people who might be buried.

Displaced families who were expelled from eastern Khan Younis on Monday have Difficulties in finding an apartment in overcrowded shelters and open spaces in the west of the city. Wednesday’s airstrike hit an area that includes a school that has been converted into a shelter for displaced people, many of whom are living in makeshift tents.

“There were three of us sitting in that tent and we were surprised by the rubble and the dust,” said one man, Jalal Lafi, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah.

“The house was bombed without warning, two rockets hit the house one after the other,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at the rubble. His hair and clothes were covered in gray soot.

The Israeli military initially made no comment on the attack.

Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN humanitarian office for the Palestinian territories, said Gaza was “the only place in the world where people cannot find safe refuge and cannot leave the front line.” Even so-called safe areas are being bombed, he told reporters in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

An Israeli airstrike on Tuesday killed a prominent Palestinian doctor and eight members of his extended family, just hours after they complied with military orders to vacate their home and move to the Israeli-designated security zone.

Most Palestinians seeking safety go either to a coastal region called Muwasi or to the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, De Domenico said.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday it estimates that at least 1.8 million Palestinians are currently in the humanitarian zone it has declared, which covers a stretch of about 14 kilometers along the Mediterranean Sea. Much of that area is now covered with Campsite Sanitation and medical facilities are lacking and access to aid is limited, say the UN and humanitarian organizations. Families live in the midst of Mountains of garbage and water polluted by sewage.

Getting food to these areas at all is “a huge challenge,” De Domenico said. Although the UN is now able to meet basic needs in northern Gaza, getting aid to the south is very difficult, he said. Israel says it is allowing aid to enter southern Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing and accuses the UN of not doing enough to transport the aid.

According to the UN, fighting, military restrictions imposed by Israel and general chaos – including criminal gangs collecting aid from trucks in Gaza – have made it almost impossible for aid workers to collect the truckloads of supplies allowed in by Israel.

The amount of food and other aid reaching Gaza has plummeted since the start of the Israeli offensive in Rafah two months ago, leading to widespread hunger and Stirring up fear of famine.

“This is an unbearable life,” said Anwar Salman, a displaced Palestinian. “If they want to kill us, let them. Let them drop a nuclear bomb and destroy us. We are fed up. We are tired. We are dying every day.”

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Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Drew Callister in New York contributed to this article.