FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
TEL AVIV – The worst has arrived. With the end of the ceasefire, Israeli forces concentrated their bombing raids on the south of the Gaza Strip. After the northern Gaza Strip, the target is now Khan Younis: The region’s second-largest city has around 205,000 inhabitants in normal times, but the heads of the local Nasser Hospital estimate that around a million refugees have arrived in the last month. Almost 80 percent of the region’s two million and 200,000 inhabitants are now homeless and displaced in the central south: over two thirds of the entire population are bivouacked in makeshift shelters. “Since the early hours of the morning, the Israelis have been dropping leaflets urging people to evacuate to Rafah, on the border with Egypt. But we have already fled the north on their orders and now we do not have the means to go further,” say the refugees interviewed by Al Jazeera and the other reporters present on the scene. According to local health sources controlled by Hamas, at least three of the nearly 200 deaths in the past few hours were journalists. Some airdropped leaflets offer telephone directions and maps via QR code to reach so-called “safe areas” in the south. Israel arbitrarily determines the areas where it promises not to attack and broadcasts them over the Internet. But it does not take into account the tragic situation on the ground: the lack of electricity and communication lines undermines any information campaign.
Israel issues a mandatory withdrawal order, the nightmare of explosions haunts the civilian population. Among the evacuated health facilities are two clinics, the “Martyrs” one and the other in Bani Suhaila, managed by the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, which yesterday launched a dramatic call for the orders to be lifted. “Citizens have been ordered to move south, but due to indiscriminate bombings and ongoing fighting, no place is safe in Gaza. Instead, civilians and vital infrastructure must be protected.” “There is a need for a permanent ceasefire,” the statement said. The same organization recalls that visits to Al-Nasser Hospital have tripled compared to before the conflict, with a thousand medical consultations every day, of which about 50 percent are for children under five years old. The most common illnesses are diarrhea, urinary tract infections due to lack of drinking water, respiratory diseases, skin diseases due to poor hygiene and a large number of serious burns.
Yesterday it became very complicated to speak to Gazans by telephone immediately after fighting resumed. But in the hours just before the end of the ceasefire, the displaced people between Khan Younis and Rafah kept telling us about their difficulties. “Many of us literally left our homes in Gaza City in our pajamas. It was still hot in mid-October when the Israelis threatened a killing attack. So we ran away without having time to take our luggage with us and now we are without warm clothes, it’s cold, it’s raining, we have no blankets for the night. “Cold, thirst and hunger are our enemies at the moment,” told us 59-year-old Majid Maki, a relatively wealthy trader who had to leave his home in the Al Rimal neighborhood to seek refuge in a hut in the Dir refugee camp the day before yesterday. El Ballah.