“This is the seventh time I’ve been displaced,” says Mariam Abu-Haleeb, sitting in a car loaded with all her remaining belongings. Under what they described as Israel’s most intense bombardment, many Palestinians have left Khan Younis after the latest attacks and headed further south towards Rafah.
“What hurts me the most is that my mother has remained in the enclave. Everyone in Khan Younis needs help. There is no security and what the Israeli army says is all a lie,” says Mariam Abu-Haleeb.
For many Palestinians, the greatest fear is the death of children who are not only killed by bombs, but also by the hunger that has engulfed the entire Gaza Strip.
“The bombings in Khan Younis were terrifying. We kept looking for a safe place in the university, but there was none. There were dead bodies on the ground, everywhere, including children,” said Ahmad Abu-Shaweesh.
Most of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents have since been displaced from their homes. With large areas razed to the ground and hospitals and humanitarian agencies struggling to cope, Palestinians describe dire conditions.
“Khan Younis has become a bloody battlefield. In the latest attack the day before, there were about 7,000 displaced people who all fled the university where they had taken refuge from the attacks. We did not imagine what would happen. I took my children and ran away with them. We were told that Nasser Hospital was safe, but they bombed around it,” says Manal Abu-Jamea.
Israeli forces and Hamas fighters clashed in several locations, from Jabalia in the north to Khan Younis in the south, the focus of Israel’s latest operations. The army has said it has hit most of northern Gaza and more than 1 million residents of that enclave have moved south to escape the bombardment. 25,105 Palestinians, many of them women and children, have been killed and 62,681 injured in Israeli attacks since October 7.