Israeli tanks batter hospital districts in Gaza's Khan Younis, displaced set to flee southward

[January 25, 2024]  By Fadi Shana, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams

GAZA/DOHA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli tanks bombarded areas around two hospitals in Gaza's main southern city Khan Younis on Thursday, forcing displaced people into a new desperate scramble for safe shelter, residents said, in an offensive Israel says is targeting Hamas militants.

Gaza health officials said at least 50 Palestinians had been killed in Khan Younis in the past 24 hours, including two children in an Israeli air strike that hit a residential home.

The city is now encircled by Israeli armoured forces and under almost non-stop aerial and ground fire, residents say, and a huge mushroom-like column of smoke billowed skyward from areas of Israeli military operations on Thursday.

Palestinian medics said Israeli tanks had cut off and were shelling targets around the city's two main still-functioning hospitals, Nasser and Al-Amal, trapping medical teams, patients and displaced people sheltering inside or nearby.

Israel says Hamas militants use hospital premises as cover for bases, something the Islamist group and medical staff deny.

The Israeli military's siege of Khan Younis' main hospitals, in what it calls an escalating campaign to eliminate militants in Hamas' main south Gaza stronghold, has made it near impossible for rescue crews to reach the wounded or collect the dead.

Most of the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million population is now squeezed into Khan Younis and towns just north and south of it, after being driven out of its northern half earlier in Israel's blitz of the Hamas-ruled territory, now in its fourth month.

The fusillade from advancing Israeli forces forced many displaced people to set out again in search of ever dwindling places of safe shelter, medics and residents said.

On Wednesday, the United Nations said Israeli tanks struck a large U.N. compound in Gaza sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing at least nine people and wounding 75. But Israel denied its forces were responsible, suggesting Hamas might have launched the shelling. It said it was reviewing the incident.

Israel said Hamas had "command and control centres, outposts and security headquarters" in the vicinity, which it described as "a dense area" with civilians as well as the premises of several hospitals where it said militants were active.

DISPLACED PEOPLE SET TO FLEE UN COMPOUND

On Thursday, thousands of displaced Palestinians who had taken refuge from Israeli shelling in the U.N. compound were preparing to flee to Rafah, 15 km (nine miles) away on Gaza's southern edge.

Israeli forces had set a 5 pm local time (1500 GMT) Friday deadline for the UN compound to be evacuated, according to residents and local journalists at the site. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Juliette Touma, chief spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, confirmed the report, estimating there are more than 30,000 displaced persons crammed inside.

At least 25,700 people have been killed in Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated and widely impoverished places, Palestinian health officials say, with large tracts of the heavily built-up enclave flattened by Israeli bombing.

Relatives of Palestinian man Abdulraheem Al-Saloot, who died of a heart disease and did not receive treatment he needed due to the worsening health conditions at Nasser hospital, according to his family, react at al-Najjar hospital, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip January 24, 2024. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Israel unleashed its war to eradicate Hamas after militants stormed through the border fence in a shock incursion into nearby Israeli towns and bases on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing around 240 hostages.

The Israeli military said on Thursday it had killed more than 9,000 Hamas militants and lost 220 soldiers in 3-1/2-month-old war. Reuters was unable to verify the figures.

In its latest update, the Israeli military said forces had carried out raids with precision air strikes and snipers to take out multiple Hamas command centres and militant emplacements in Khan Younis, including the Al Amal district.

"In close-quarters combat, the soldiers eliminated the terrorists, and various weapons were discovered in the process," it said in a statement.

'HUMANITARIAN PAUSE' TALKS SNAGGED

Urgent international appeals for a ceasefire to spare civilians who have borne the brunt of casualties have fallen on deaf ears with Israel vowing not to relent until Hamas has been eradicated and all hostages freed.

Hamas says any deal must hinge on Israel ending its offensive and siege and withdrawing from the Gaza Strip.

Mediated talks on a month-long truce that could see hostages freed in swaps for Palestinian prisoners in Israel have resumed, but have snagged on the two sides' differences over how to bring an end to the war, sources told Reuters.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said less than 20% of the narrow enclave - around 60 square km (23 sq miles) - now harboured over 1.5 million people in the south, "where the dramatic escalation of fighting threatens their survival".

Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said Nasser Hospital was running at only 10% of capacity in "harsh and frightening conditions", having run out of food, pain killers and anaesthesia medications.

In north Gaza, residents said they had almost completely run out of food, especially flour, and have been grinding down livestock feed to replenish it.

Video footage from Gaza City's al-Zeitoun district in the north, verified by Reuters, showed hundreds of people fleeing from an aid distribution point as gunfire crackled nearby.

The U.N. World Food Programme said earlier this week very little food aid had made it beyond south Gaza since the start of the war and pockets of the enclave remained at risk of famine.

Gaza's conflict threatens to destabilise the Middle East, stoking hostilities ranging from the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the Israel-Lebanon border region, Syria, Iraq and Red Sea shipping lanes crucial to international trade.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry that exercises limited self rule there, said at least 370 people had been killed in Israeli army raids or clashes since Oct. 7.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Doha, Fadi Shana in Gaza, Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Jonathan Saul in London; writing by Mark Heinrich; editing by Sharon Singleton)

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