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The Israeli military has ordered tens of thousands of Palestinians to leave shelters in parts of southern Gaza, in preparation for another raid on areas from which it says Hamas fighters are operating.
The forced evacuation order of parts of Khan Younis comes as the death toll from Saturday’s air strike on a school in Gaza City was confirmed to be 80, after original estimates of about 100.
The attack has drawn sharp criticism from Israel’s allies, including EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who described it as an unjustifiable “massacre”.
US Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said on Saturday that “far too many civilians have been killed”. Her comments came after the US State Department confirmed that $3.5bn of funding for Israel to purchase American weapons had been approved, as part of a $14.1bn package agreed by US Congress.
Israel has claimed, without providing evidence, that the school where hundreds of families were seeking shelter was being used as a Hamas “command and control” centre, and that 19 militants were killed.
Videos from the site showed mangled bodies after the attack, many of them children. Palestinian human rights groups have said that some of the men identified by Israel had nothing to do with Hamas.
The widening incursion into southern Gaza, including areas within the so-called humanitarian zone, is at least the third time in recent months that the Israeli military has returned to the city of Khan Younis, once a Hamas stronghold and now a devastated ruin of shattered city blocks and destroyed neighbourhoods.
The Israeli air force dropped leaflets over the Al Jalaa neighbourhood telling residents to gather their belongings and flee before the Israel Defense Forces began “to operate against the [militant] organisations in the area”, according to an IDF statement.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3mn population has been displaced, some several times, as the Israeli military operates in various parts of the territory. Videos posted online showed children carrying jerrycans of waters and long columns of families trudging through devastated streets.
The new raid came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delays any political strategy to bring order to the besieged enclave after 10 months of war.
The IDF launched air and land offensives in Gaza in response to Hamas’s October 7 cross-border assault in southern Israel. Hamas killed more than 1,200 people during the attack and seized about 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials, who say around 100 hostages are still in captivity.
The death toll in Gaza is nearing 40,000, most of them women and children, according to local health officials.
Disease is widespread in the fetid camps in which most of the displaced are sheltering, with the UN warning that the enclave is nearing famine as humanitarian aid into Gaza remains far below required levels.
The US, Egypt and Qatar have called for Israel and Hamas to agree to a hostage swap deal that could usher in at least a brief ceasefire, or a permanent end to hostilities.
The three mediators issued a statement on Thursday calling for both sides “to resume urgent discussions in Doha or Cairo to close remaining gaps” and “commence implementation of the deal without further delay”.
A meeting was mooted for next week, although its prospects remain unclear. The US and its allies view a ceasefire-for-hostages deal as the only way to de-escalate regional hostilities.
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