GAZA: The Zionist entity sent tanks back into the greater Khan Yunis area and at least 49 Palestinians were killed by Zionist fire, Gaza medics said on Monday, after ordering evacuations of some districts it said had been used for renewed attacks by fighters. The Palestinians were killed by tank salvos in the town of Bani Suhaila and other towns fringing the eastern side of Khan Yunis, with the area also bombarded by air, they said. Residents of the densely built-up area of southern Gaza said the tanks advanced for more than two kilometers into Bani Suhaila, forcing residents to flee under fire. “It is like doomsday,” one resident, who only identified himself as Abu Khaled, told Reuters via chat app. “People are fleeing under fire, many are dead and wounded on the roads.”

The Gaza health ministry said the dead included several women and children and that at least 186 other people had been injured by Zionist fire. Around 400,000 people are living in the targeted areas and dozens of families have begun to leave their houses, Palestinian officials said, adding they were not given time to get out of harm’s way before the Zionist strikes began.

Some families fled on donkey carts, others on foot, carrying mattresses and other belongings. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said two of its clinics located in eastern Khan Yunis had been knocked out of operation. The death toll among Palestinians in the Zionist offensive reached at least 39,006 as of Monday, Gaza health authorities said.

At Khan Yunis’ Nasser Hospital, some people stood outside the morgue to bid farewell to dead relatives. “We are tired, we are tired in Gaza, every day our children are martyred, every day, every moment,” said Ahmed Sammour, who lost several relatives in bombings of eastern Khan Yunis. “No one told us to evacuate. They brought four floors crashing down on civilians... and the bodies they could reach, they brought to the refrigerator (morgue),” Sammour added.

Residents of Khan Yunis initially fled their homes when Zionist tanks stormed in several months ago, before returning after they withdrew to rebuild their lives. In nearby Deir Al-Balah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, a Zionist airstrike hit a tent used by local journalists inside Al-Aqsa Hospital, killing one of them and wounding two other people, the Gaza government media office said. The new death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in the Zionist offensive to 163, it added.

Earlier on Monday, the Zionist military said it had issued new evacuation orders due to renewed Palestinian attacks, including rockets launched from the targeted areas in eastern Khan Yunis. The orders did not include health institutions, Palestinians said. The Gaza Civil Emergency Services said the Zionist entity’s new orders showed it had downsized the humanitarian-designated areas in southern and central areas, where 1.7 million people were sheltering, to 48 sq km from 65 sq km in the past. The Palestinians, the United Nations and international relief agencies have said there is no safe place left in Gaza.

Health officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis urged residents on Monday to donate blood because of the large number of casualties being rushed into the medical center. “A family, including children, were all torn to pieces while they were sleeping,” said one man who arrived at the hospital in an ambulance bearing the bodies. – Reuters