Israel orders new evacuation from Gaza humanitarian zone

As the prime minister boarded his plane, the United Nations accused Israeli troops of firing on one of its aid convoys a day earlier as it traveled an agreed-upon route to northern Gaza. Past attacks by Israeli forces on aid workers have strained relations between Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration, which has provided Israel with a steady stream of weapons throughout the war.

After nine months of conflict, relief groups describe Gaza as one of the most dangerous places to operate in the world, as more than 1 million civilians shelter in tents from the summer heat. Famine is looming, according to a U.N.-backed assessment, and Israel’s Health Ministry said Friday that it has detected a strain of the polio virus in Gaza’s sewage as a sanitation crisis mounts.

As part of Israel’s operation Monday, its military ordered the evacuation of an eastern sector of the city of Khan Younis. The orders also included an area within the city’s Mawasi neighborhood, which was previously within the boundaries of a designated safe zone for displaced people. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in the safe zone area.

Images from inside Gaza show thousands of people clutching their possessions as they push through streets crammed with people and debris, seeking to escape areas that Israel said would soon see military action.

In a statement, Hamas’s military wing said it had fired upon three Israeli tanks and a bulldozer in the Bani Suheila area of Khan Younis, suggesting that fierce battles were raging there. The Gaza Health Ministry said 70 people have been killed and 200 wounded so far on Monday. The local civil defense force said members of one of its ambulance crews were wounded as they tried to reach casualties at the Bani Suhaila roundabout.

In Nasser Hospital, one of the most functional remaining medical facilities in the Gaza Strip, casualties streamed in and doctors did what they could. Many of the patients were children, and some arrived by themselves, medics said. Javid Abdelmoneim, a medical team leader for Doctors Without Borders, said he had treated women with burns and bodies riddled with shrapnel, as well as a young boy with “horrific” facial injuries.

It was the hospital’s fourth mass casualty event of the week, and this time, Abdelmoneim said, the staff’s families were affected. “Two of them were crying as they received calls from their family. They were hearing the sound of violence outside their homes, but the families couldn’t leave,” he said.

At one point, another doctor “turned white as a ghost,” Abdelmoneim recalled. The man had recognized one of the most grievously wounded. “I was working with that doctor yesterday,” the man said.

Out on the streets of Khan Younis, Iman al-Zeer, 34, a mother of four, reached by phone, said she was unable to leave due to heavy gunfire.

Zeer said she could hear the sound of intense shelling and airstrikes close by. “We were listening to the sounds of the screams of people as they fled,” she said. “Whenever we try to move, we are shot at. It’s impossible for us to move, because we would have to walk toward Bani Suhaila.”

Also Monday, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that aids Palestinian refugees, said that Israeli forces fired upon one of the organization’s convoys a day earlier as it waited for the Israeli army to green-light its onward movement to the battle-scarred north.

“The teams were traveling in clearly marked UN armoured cars & wearing UN vests. One vehicle received at least five bullets,” Lazzarini said in a message posted to X. “Those responsible must be held accountable.”

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about the incident. Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, said that, by chance, she had been sitting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle that was fired upon. The bullets appeared to have come from an area of IDF operations to the east, she said, and left fragments on the back seat.

“We were incredibly lucky that there was nobody in the back seat. This is the first mission I’ve ever been on in the Gaza Strip where there was…