Israel strikes in and around Gaza’s second-largest city in a bloody new phase of the war

Israel intensified its bombardment in and around Gaza’s second-largest city Tuesday, sending ambulances and private cars racing into a local hospital carrying people wounded in a bloody new phase of the war.

Under U.S. pressure to prevent further mass casualties in the conflict with Hamas, Israel says it is being more precise as it widens its offensive into southern Gaza after obliterating much of the north. But Palestinians say there are no areas where they feel safe, and many fear that if they leave their homes, they will never be allowed to return.

Aerial bombardment and the ground offensive have already driven three-fourths of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes, and new orders to evacuate areas around Khan Younis are squeezing people into ever-smaller areas of the already tiny coastal strip.

At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, ambulances brought dozens of wounded people in, including a young boy in a bloody shirt whose hand had been blown off.

“What’s happening here is unimaginable,” said Hamza al-Bursh, who lives in the neighborhood of Maan, one of several in and around the city where Israel has ordered civilians to leave. “They strike indiscriminately.”

Residents said troops advanced following heavy airstrikes to Bani Suheila, a town just east of Khan Younis. Halima Abdel-Rahman, who fled to the town earlier in the war from her home in the north, said they could hear explosions through the night.

“They are very close,” she said. “It’s the same scenario we saw in the north.”

Satellite photos from Sunday showed around 150 Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles just under 6 kilometers (4 miles) north of the heart of the city.

FEWER PLACES TO GO

Israel ordered the full-scale evacuation of northern Gaza in the early days of the war and has barred people who left from returning. In the south, it has ordered people out of nearly two dozen neighborhoods in and around Khan Younis. That further reduced the area where civilians can seek refuge in central and southern Gaza by more than a quarter.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza, and there is nowhere left to go,” Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said Monday. “The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist. If possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold.”

Israel says it must dismantle Hamas’ extensive military infrastructure and remove it from power in order to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war. The surprise assault through the border fence saw Hamas and other Palestinian militants kill about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capture some 240 men, women and children.

The military says it makes every effort to spare civilians and accuses Hamas of using them as human shields as the militants fight in dense residential areas, where they have labyrinths of tunnels and bunkers, as well as rocket launchers and sniper nests.

Hamas is deeply rooted in Palestinian society, and its determination to end decades of open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians is shared by the vast majority, even those opposed to its maximalist aim of eventually destroying Israel, and its attacks on civilians. That will complicate any effort to eliminate Hamas without causing massive casualties and further displacement.

Even after weeks of unrelenting bombardment, Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, was able to conduct complex cease-fire negotiations and orchestrate the release of more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners last week. Palestinian militants have also kept up their rocket fire into Israel, both before and after the truce.

AN UNPRECEDENTED TOLL

The fighting has meanwhile brought unprecedented death and destruction to the coastal strip.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said the death toll in the territory since Oct. 7 has surpassed 15,890 people – 70% of them women and children – with more than 42,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. It says hundreds have been killed or wounded since the cease-fire’s end, and many still are trapped under rubble.

An Israeli army official provided a similar figure for the death toll in Gaza on Monday, after weeks in which Israeli officials had cast doubt on the ministry’s count. The official said at least 15,000 people have been killed, including 5,000 militants, without saying how the military arrived at its figures. The military says 86 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza offensive.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that it was too soon to pass judgment on Israeli operations, but that it was unusual for a modern military to identify precise areas of expected ground maneuvers and ask people to move out, as Israel has done in Khan Younis.

“These are the kinds of steps that we have asked them to undertake,” he said.

Leaflets dropped by the Israeli military over Khan Younis in recent days warn people to head farther south toward the border with Egypt, but they are unable to leave Gaza, as both Israel and neighboring Egypt have refused to accept any refugees.

The area that Israel ordered evacuated was home to some 117,000 people, and now it also houses more than 50,000 people displaced from the north, living in 21 shelters, the U.N. said. It was not known how many were fleeing.

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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed.

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