GAZA: Palestinians fled southern Gaza’s main city on Sunday as the Zionist entity warned of a new military operation, a day after one of the deadliest reported strikes in more than 10 months of war. The fighting in the besieged Gaza Strip has sent tensions soaring across the region. Intense diplomacy in recent days sought to avert a wider war in the Middle East following the killings of Iran-aligned resistance leaders, while international mediators invited the Zionist entity and Hamas to resume stalled talks towards a long-sought Gaza truce and hostage-release deal.

AFP journalists said scores of Palestinians fled northern neighborhoods of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city already ravaged by months of bombardment and battles, after the Zionist entity issued fresh evacuation orders overnight. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents and displaced families were forced to leave in the dark as explosions from tank shelling reverberated around them.

The Zionist military dropped leaflets and sent mobile phone messages warning of “dangerous combat” in Al-Jalaa district and telling Palestinian residents to leave the area, which until Sunday was designated a humanitarian safe zone. Similar evacuation orders have preceded major military incursions, often forcing Palestinians displaced numerous times by the war to pack up and leave for safety.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that “just in the past few days, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza.” The entire territory has a population of about 2.4 million people. Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, said people in Gaza were trapped and had nowhere to go. “Some are only able to carry their children with them, some carry their whole lives in one small bag. They are going to overcrowded places where shelters are already overflowing with families. They have lost everything and need everything,” he said.

Families gathered their meager belongings as crowds of people left Al-Jalaa, some loading mattresses, clothing and cooking utensils into pick-up trucks. Others took to the road on foot. Umm Sami Shahada, a 55-year-old displaced Palestinian, said she had “fled Gaza City at the start of the war for Khan Yunis”, hoping to find shelter. “My daughter was killed in bombardment, so we went to Rafah, then we came back here, and now with this new evacuation order we don’t know where to go”, she said.

In northern Gaza, a Zionist air strike on Friday killed at least 93 people at Gaza City’s Al-Tabieen religious school housing displaced Palestinians, according to civil defense rescuers, sparking international condemnation. The death toll is one of the largest from a single strike since the war began. Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defense

agency in Gaza, said on Sunday that identifying the victims could take at least two days as “we have many bodies torn into pieces” and “shredded or burnt by the bombs”.

Hamas in a statement called Arab and Muslim nations to “take effective decisions” to stop the war and demanded an urgent UN Security Council meeting to force the Zionist entity “to stop the aggression and genocide”. The Palestinian group, which has named its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar to succeed slain political leader Ismail Haniyeh, has yet to respond to an invitation from US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators for truce negotiations on Aug 15. The Zionist entity has accepted.

Haniyeh was killed during a visit to Tehran on July 31, an attack blamed on the Zionist entity which has not claimed responsibility. But hours earlier it killed the military chief of Lebanese Hamas ally Hezbollah in a strike on Beirut. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and other regional allies have vowed retaliation, spurring fears of a wider conflagration. US President Joe Biden, asked what his message was to Iran, responded: “Don’t.”

The Zionist military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 39,790 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, mostly women and children. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Sunday that “an end to the war in Gaza would be a decisive step towards a regional de-escalation”. Hamas officials, some analysts and critics in the Zionist entity have said Netanyahu has sought to prolong the fighting for political gain.

Witnesses told AFP that the Zionist entity carried out a strike on Khan Yunis, wounding several people. “Civilians... were shopping in the market when a missile hit,” said resident Awad Barbakh. The military said its air forces hit militants in Rafah, further south, and “struck approximately 30 Hamas terror targets” across Gaza over the past day.

In the northern West Bank, emergency services said a Zionist man was shot dead and another wounded in what the military described as a “terrorist” attack. The Zionist entity has occupied the West Bank since 1967 when it also seized the Gaza Strip, from which it withdrew in 2005, but later imposed a crippling blockade followed by a siege shortly after Oct 7. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is due to visit Moscow next week to discuss the Gaza war with Russian President Vladimir Putin, official Russian media said citing the Palestinian ambassador. – Agencies