Israel sends tanks back into Khan Younis area, 49 killed after new evacuation order

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Ari Rabinovitch and Hatem Khaled

CAIRO/JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) -Israel sent tanks back into the greater Khan Younis area and at least 49 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, Gaza medics said on Monday, after ordering evacuations of some districts it said had been used for renewed attacks by militants.

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

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

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

The Gaza health ministry said the dead included several women and children and that at least 186 other people had been injured by Israeli fire. The Gaza ministry does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its death tallies.

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

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

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

At Khan Younis' Nasser Hospital, some people stood outside the morgue to bid farewell to dead 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... and the bodies they could reach, they brought to the refrigerator (morgue)," Sammour added.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on the strikes on the eastern side of Khan Younis, whose population initially fled their homes when Israeli tanks stormed in several months ago, before returning after they withdrew to rebuild their lives.

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

The new death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in the Israeli offensive to 163, it added.

EVACUATION ORDERS

Earlier on Monday, the Israeli military said it had issued new evacuation orders due to renewed Palestinian 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 Hamas-led Palestinian militants.

The Gaza Civil Emergency Services said Israel'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 square km from 65 square km in the past.

The Palestinians, the United 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 into 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.

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

The death toll among Palestinians in Israel'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 Christian Schmollinger, Sharon Singleton, Gareth Jones and Mark Heinrich)