Israel and Hamas at War, Day 310 | Hundreds of Palestinians Forced to Flee in Southern Gaza

(Khan Younis) Hundreds of Palestinians fled on Sunday the northern districts of Khan Younis, a large city in the south of the Gaza Strip where the Israeli army has issued evacuation orders in preparation for new military operations, AFP correspondents report.

Early in the morning, Israeli warplanes dropped messages calling on civilians to leave the al-Jalaa area, while sending text messages around, pushing back onto the roads families often already displaced several times by the bombings, which have been uninterrupted on the small coastal territory since October 7.

The war was triggered that day by an unprecedented attack by Hamas commandos on Israeli soil, which resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped, 111 are still being held in Gaza, of whom 39 are dead, according to the army.

Israeli retaliations in Gaza have so far left 39,790 dead, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry, which does not detail the number of civilians and fighters killed.

They have caused a humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory, which is threatened by famine, according to the UN.

The Israeli army says it wants to dislodge Hamas fighters from Khan Younis, which has already been the target of several major campaigns and entire sections of which have been razed. Regularly, Israeli troops return to areas from which they had withdrawn, faced with the resurgence of Hamas units.

On Sunday, families with a few hastily gathered belongings left al-Jalaa, many on foot or in pick-up trucks loaded with mattresses, clothes and kitchen utensils.

Oum Sami Chahada, 55, is one of those cohorts who have now become part of daily life in Gaza.

“I fled Gaza City at the beginning of the war for Khan Younis,” she told AFP. “My daughter was killed there in a bombing, so we went to Rafah,” further south, “then we came back here and now, with this new evacuation order, we don’t know where to go,” she laments.

“In the last few days alone, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in the southwest of the Gaza Strip,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, told X.

“Gazans are trapped and have nowhere to go,” he wrote. “Some can only take their children with them, others have packed their entire lives into a small bag.”