Thousands more Palestinians fled their homes in the central Gaza Strip on 29 July following new evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army.
“The majority of the displaced population is flowing to the Deir al-Balah city that is already packed with displaced families and has no sufficient space or resources to accommodate people,” an Al-Jazeera correspondent reported on Monday.
“There is literally no safe place in Gaza.”
As people fled, heavy Israeli airstrikes and artillery attacks pounded the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israeli attacks on Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa in the north and Khan Yunis in the south have been ongoing.
UNRWA said on 29 July that only 14 percent of Gaza is not under Israel’s forced evacuation orders. Eighty-six percent of the strip is now displaced as a result of Israeli attacks and evacuation orders across the strip, marking a three percent rise since just last week.
Thousands were displaced from the southern city of Khan Yunis last week after Israel ordered residents to flee under heavy bombardment. Evacuations in the southern city are still ongoing.
Israeli forces sent tanks deeper into Khan Yunis on 28 July as part of a new operation, including into the towns of Al-Qarara, Al-Zanna, and Bani Suhaila in the east of the city.
Over a dozen Palestinian civilians were killed on Sunday as Israeli forces bombed homes and tent encampments in the southern city. Among the casualties were four children, one of them a baby who was decapitated by Israeli bombs.
Israeli troops reentered Khan Yunis on 22 July after issuing initial evacuation orders to residents, less than two weeks after forcibly displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza City in the northern strip.
As residents of the strip are continuously being displaced with nowhere to go, clashes are raging in southern, central, and northern Gaza between the Israeli army and several Palestinian resistance factions, including Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement’s Quds Brigades, and others.
“Our fighters managed to snipe two Zionist soldiers and directly wound them in the town of Bani Suhaila, east of the city of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip,” the Qassam Brigades said in a statement on Sunday evening.
Several other operations were announced against troops in Rafah, Khan Yunis, and other areas of central and northern Gaza on 28 July.
By The Cradle News Desk
Published by The Cradle
Republished by The 21st Century
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