Hundreds of Palestinians flee southern Gaza ahead of new Israeli operations

The army claimed that Hamas had “established a terrorist infrastructure” in the area and was “preparing to carry out operations”.

“With this new evacuation order, we don't know where to go,” said Sami Chahada, 55, who had already left the city once after her daughter was killed in a bombing.

International shout

In Gaza City, relief efforts are still underway a day after an Israeli attack that the Gaza Civil Defense says killed 93 Palestinians, including women and children, at a school housing displaced people, sparking an international outcry. “It will take us two more days to identify the bodies that have been torn apart,” Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said.

The Israeli military claimed that this school was used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad (another armed Palestinian movement) to “carry out attacks” against its soldiers and claimed to have eliminated “at least 19 terrorists” there.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007 – and which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union – after the attack on its territory that killed 1,198 people, mostly civilians . . Of the 251 abducted, 111 are still being held in Gaza, of whom 39 are dead, according to the army.

Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza has left at least 39,790 dead, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government, which does not detail the number of civilians and fighters killed.

New strikes hit the Khan Younes refugee camp.


New strikes hit the Khan Younes refugee camp.

EYAD BABA/AFP

75,000 displaced people

Israeli troops regularly return to areas from which they withdrew in the face of resurgent Palestinian fighting units. On Sunday, new bombings were carried out on Khan Younes. Palestinians flocked to the city's Nasser Hospital after a strike, carrying dead bodies and wounded in blood-stained T-shirts. “They were all civilians doing their shopping when the rocket fell,” says one witness, Awad Barbakh.

In recent days, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in the southwest, according to the UN agency responsible for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

Other areas in the center and north of the besieged Palestinian territory were targeted overnight. At least two people were killed, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

End the “genocide”

In this context, Hamas on Sunday asked the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency session to end the “genocide”.

The war threatens to spread to the region after the July 31 assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh, attributed to Israel, and the July 30 death of Lebanese Hezbollah military leader Fouad Chokr, killed in a strike near Beirut. by Israel.

Iran and its allies have threatened Israel with a “severe” response. In the occupied West Bank, where tensions have risen sharply, the Israeli military said an Israeli civilian in his twenties had been killed in a vehicle attack by “terrorists”, still wanted.

The relaunch of mediation

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who lives in the West Bank, will visit Russia from August 12 to meet with Vladimir Putin, then to Turkey to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On Thursday, the mediating countries – Qatar, the United States and Egypt – called for the resumption, on August 15, of talks on a cease-fire in Gaza, associated with the release of the hostages. Israel agreed, Hamas has yet to react.

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