Life and death in Gaza’s ‘safe zone’ where food is scarce, and Israel strikes without warning

Khan Younis (Gaza Strip): An Israeli airstrike slammed into a residential building next to the main medical centre in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, wounding at least seven people, hospital authorities and witnesses said Wednesday.

Nasser Hospital sits in the western part of the city, which is inside the Israeli-designated humanitarian “safe zone” where Palestinians have been told to go, according to maps provided by Israel’s military. The latest Israeli evacuation order affected about 250,000 people earlier this week across wide swathes of Gaza, the United Nations estimated.

As dust from Wednesday’s bombing billowed through a street near Nasser Hospital, an Associated Press contributor filmed people running in all directions — some rushing toward the destruction and some away. Men carried two young boys, apparently wounded. Later, civil defence first responders and bystanders picked their way across chunks of cement and twisted metal, searching for people who might have been buried.

Displaced families ordered out of eastern Khan Younis on Monday have struggled to find places to live in overcrowded shelters and open areas in the western parts of the city. Wednesday’s airstrike hit an area that also includes a school-turned-shelter for displaced people, many of whom are living in makeshift tents.

“We were sitting in this tent, three people, and we were surprised by the rubble and dust,” said one man, Jalal Lafi, who was displaced from the city of Rafah in the south.

“The house was bombed without any warning, hit by two missiles in a row, one after another,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at the rubble, his hair and clothes covered in grey soot.

Andrea De Domenico, the head of the UN humanitarian office for the Palestinian territories, said Gaza is “the only place in the world where people cannot find a safe refuge, and can’t leave the front line.” Even in so-called safe areas there are bombings, he told reporters Wednesday in Jerusalem.

An Israeli airstrike Tuesday killed a prominent Palestinian doctor and eight members of his extended family, just hours after they complied with military orders to evacuate their home and moved to the Israeli-designated safe zone.

Most Palestinians are either heading to a coastal area called Muwasi, which is filled with sprawling tent camps that have few basic services, and the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, De Domenico said.

He said it’s been “a major challenge” to even bring food to those two areas. The Israeli military estimates some 1.9 million people are now clustered in central Gaza.

Israeli restrictions, the ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order have curtailed humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine.

“It’s an unendurable life,” said Anwar Salman, a displaced Palestinian. “If they want to kill us, let them do it. Let them drop a nuclear bomb and finish us.