Doctors in the largest hospital in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis pleaded for supplies from a facility overwhelmed by wounded people, as Israeli airstrikes, artillery fire and fighting on the streets continued for a second day.
“There’s no space for more patients. There’s no space in the operating theatres. There is a lack of medical supplies, so we cannot save our patients,” Mohammed Zaqout, the director of Nasser hospital, told AFP.
The UN’s office for humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said the hospital was facing “a new mass casualty influx, amid a dire lack of blood units, medical supplies and hospital beds”.
Palestinian health officials said more than 70 people have been killed and more than 200 injured since Israeli forces launched a new ground invasion of Khan Younis, the enclave’s second city.
Residents told Reuters that Israeli tanks had advanced into Bani Suhaila, a town on the edge of central Khan Younis, as soldiers searched the town’s cemetery and others took over the rooftops of high-rise buildings, occasionally firing their weapons.
Israeli airstrikes targeted Khan Younis, which has already been reduced to little more than shattered concrete and rubble from months of fighting. The Israeli military described fighting in “close-quarters combat”, as Palestinian militants battled Israeli troops on the streets.
“Gaza is over, Gaza is dead, Gaza has gone. There is nothing left, nothing,” Hassan Qudayh, a local person forced to evacuate, told AFP.
Relief organisations feared that Israeli forces’ latest commands to evacuate, affecting an estimated 400,000 people in Khan Younis and parts of the al-Mawasi coastal area, were simply forcing people to return to unsafe areas repeatedly targeted with airstrikes and artillery.
“A new evacuation order by the Israeli military encompasses about 8.7km sq in the so-called ‘humanitarian zone’ in al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, decreasing the area of the zone by nearly 15%,” said OCHA.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said earlier this week that they were about to “forcefully operate” against militants in eastern Khan Younis, accusing Hamas militants of using the area to fire rockets into Israel.
They instructed anyone sheltering there to flee “to the adjusted humanitarian area in al-Mawasi”, despite reports that Israeli forces are also operating in parts of al-Mawasi, previously designated as a humanitarian zone.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, estimated that more 80% of the total land area of the Gaza Strip “has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as a no-go zone”.
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for Unrwa on the ground in Gaza, told BBC Radio 4: “We just keep hearing the same question: Where do I go?”
As Palestinians fled, many for the fourth or fifth time or more, to areas with dwindling infrastructure, officials from the World Health Organization warned of “high risk” of the spread of polio.
Traces of the life-threatening virus had been detected in groundwater in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah in the centre of the territory, they said, as images from Gaza showed people attempting to navigate pools of dirty water on streets decimated by fighting and bombardments.
