Palestinians Flee Khan Younis after Israel Warning

Large numbers of Palestinians have continued to flee from Khan Younis, the second-biggest city, after an Israeli evacuation order. The UN says that a quarter of a million people have been warned to move from the east of the city. They’ve been told to seek refuge in a coastal area where there are few basic services. Reports say that an Israeli airstrike killed 12 Palestinians who just arrived there despite it being designated as a safe zone by Israel. Well, earlier I spoke to our Middle East correspondent, Yolande Knell, who gave us this update.

So this is the latest evacuation order from the Israeli military. It was issued on Monday evening, and very quickly we saw thousands of people fleeing towards this coastal area over in the west of the Gaza Strip. Those scenes have been continuing panicky, chaotic, people who’ve been displaced already multiple times. And the reason just so many people are affected in this part of Khan Younis is because of the city, although it had been largely destroyed by an Israeli military offensive that ended back in April, you’ll remember that it was seen as being a stronghold of Hamas, well, people had begun to return to their homes there, even if they were camping out and the rubble. And then when Israel began its ground assault in Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza, back in May, we saw the UN said about a million people fleeing from there, and many of them ended up in Khan Younis.

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Now they’re on the move again, people saying it’s just really not clear where they should go to for safety, because as you were saying, as much as there has been some bombardment in the east of Khan Younis with the Israeli military saying that one of the sites it hit was a rocket launch site where Islamic Jihad is said to have launched rockets from on Monday, but even in this area that’s been designated as a humanitarian zone, we’re getting a report of an Israeli airstrike that took place yesterday killing, according to the reports we’ve seen from medics and local people, a family who’d just gone there from Khan Younis. I have asked the Israeli military for comments on that strike on a building where the family was staying with other relatives of theirs, and they haven’t yet been able to get back to me with a comment.

So difficulties when it comes to whether this is a genuinely designated safe zone. Also, the conditions on the ground, are we getting aid through? Is the situation improving somewhat at all when it comes to getting aid distributed to people, or is it still a really difficult situation there?

I mean, of course what’s happening now with this latest mass displacement of people is just going to complicate things further. But what we’ve seen according to humanitarian agencies is that the situation in the south and in the center of the Gaza, Strip has just become much, much more difficult since Israel launched its operation in Rafah because that closed the Rafah crossing with Egypt, that was a main crossing point for aid coming to this, the most crowded part of the Gaza Strip, you have most of the population displaced and crammed down into this half of the territory.

Yolande Knell there in Jerusalem.