Israeli air strikes kill 47 in south Gaza ahead of looming offensive against Hamas

An Israeli offensive into south Gaza could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled the Israeli storming of Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.

Overnight on Saturday, 26 Palestinians were killed and 23 wounded by an air strike on two apartments in a multi-story block in a busy residential district of Khan Younis, according to health officials.

Eyad Al-Zaeem told Reuters he lost his aunt, her children and her grandchildren in the air strike in Khan Younis, and that all had evacuated from north Gaza on Israeli army orders only to die where the army told them they could be safe.

“All of them were martyred. They had nothing to do with the (Hamas) resistance,” said Zaeem, standing outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis where 26 bodies were laid out before they were to be carried by loved ones to burials.

A few km (miles) to the north, six Palestinians were killed when a house was bombed from the air in the town of Deir Al-Balah, according to health authorities.

A third Israeli air strike on Saturday afternoon killed 15 Palestinians in a house west of Khan Younis, close to a shelter for displaced people, witnesses and medics said.

Israel says Hamas typically conceals fighters and weaponry in residential and other civilian buildings, which Hamas denies.

An Israeli military statement said only that over the past 24 hours its air force hit dozens of Gaza targets including militants, command centers, rocket launch sites and munitions factories.

A senior aide to Israel’s prime minister urged Palestinian civilians on Friday to relocate away from Khan Younis as Israeli forces would have to advance into the city to oust Hamas fighters dug into underground tunnels and bunkers — suggesting an Israeli ground offensive into the south was imminent.

The pending Israeli advance into south Gaza may prove more complicated and deadlier than in the north, however, with the civilian population swelled by some 400,000 evacuees and fiercer fighting expected with militants dug into the Khan Younis region, a senior Israeli source and two ex-top officials said.

Much to international alarm, Israel made Al Shifa a primary focus of its ground advance in north Gaza.

Its forces took it over after reporting clashes with Hamas fighters outside and are combing the premises and excavating parts of it, saying they have found evidence of a Hamas redoubt underground. Al Shifa staff say Israel has proven no such thing.

Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said all except about 125 of around 1,000-1,500 war-wounded or sick patients, as well as 34 newborn babies along with a small number of doctors and nurses, had been forced to leave Al Shifa by Israeli troops.

“The situation at (Al Shifa) is very catastrophic. It is now without fuel, without food, without medicine, without food, without water — this means killing them (patients),” she told a press conference in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The Israeli army denied the Palestinian accounts. In a statement, it said its forces at Al Shifa had acceded to a request from its director to “expand and assist” in further voluntary evacuations via a “secure route”. Doctors could stay to support patients too weak to be evacuated, it said.

Palestinian health officials said evacuees from Al Shifa had been left to fend for them themselves on foot along dangerous, bombed-out roads in areas repeatedly under air attack.

“We were forced by the occupation authorities to leave Al Shifa,” Ramez Rudwan, an Al Shifa doctor, said as he and his daughter, also a doctor, arrived in south Gaza on Saturday.

He said patients still at Al Shifa were in a dire state due to a lack of medicines with “some bacteria beginning to surface on their legs, and worms coming out of wounds”.

With the war entering its seventh week, there was no sign of a let-up, despite international calls for “humanitarian pauses.”

The U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA said no aid entered Gaza for a third day running on Friday and distributions had come to a virtual halt due to a lack of security guarantees and fuel. It said raw sewage has begun flowing in the streets in some areas as a result of a lack of fuel to run infrastructure.

Violence has also beset Israel’s northern border where it has been exchanging fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants, and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, stoking fears the Gaza war could kindle a broader Middle East conflict.