Israeli attacks kill 31 Palestinians across Gaza Strip
At least 31 Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip since the early hours of Tuesday, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
Three were killed in a drone attack that hit the Mansoura area in eastern Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood. Israeli forces also destroyed an entire residential block in the area, Wafa said.
Another three Palestinians were killed in an attack on eastern Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Family killed as Israel’s latest evacuation order triggers panic
The Hamdan family – around a dozen people from three generations – fled their home in the middle of the night after the Israeli military ordered an evacuation from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
They found refuge with extended relatives in a building further north, inside a so-called “safe zone”. But hours after they arrived, an Israeli air raid hit the building in the town of Deir el-Balah, killing nine members of the family and three others, The Associated Press reported.
In all, five children and three women were among the dead, according to hospital records and a relative who survived.
Israel’s order for people to leave the eastern half of Khan Younis has triggered the third mass flight of Palestinians in as many months, throwing the population deeper into confusion, chaos and misery as they scramble once again to find safety.
About 250,000 people live in the area covered by the order, according to the United Nations. Many of them had just returned to their homes there after fleeing Israel’s invasion of Khan Younis earlier this year – or had just taken refuge there after escaping Israel’s offensive in the city of Rafah, further south.
Four killed in attack on home in Sheikh Radwan
Gaza’s Civil Defence says it has retrieved the bodies of four slain Palestinians, killed in an Israeli attack on the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, northwest of Gaza City. At least seven others were wounded in the attack on a residential home in the al-Zarqa area, it said, adding that the home belonged to the Muqat family.
More people are believed to be trapped under the rubble.
Video shows Palestinians sleeping on the ground outside a hospital
Footage authenticated by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking unit Sanad shows Palestinians sleeping on the ground in the open air outside a hospital in southern Gaza after being forced to evacuate Khan Younis.
Hundreds of patients have been forced to flee the European Hospital, and tent camps in Khan Younis have emptied, after the Israeli army ordered an evacuation of eastern areas of the southern city in preparation for intensified military operations.
Gaza’s Media Office that the evacuation order has deepened an already dire “humanitarian catastrophe” and will exacerbate the healthcare situation in an “unprecedented way”.
نازحون يفترشون الأرض بعد إجبارهم على إخلاء مناطق في خان يونس#فيديو #حرب_غزة pic.twitter.com/xP2rjoX4Dk
— الجزيرة فلسطين (@AJA_Palestine) July 3, 2024
Families ‘still trapped’ in Shujayea: Video report captures immense destruction
With the sound of Israeli military drones flying low overhead, Palestinian journalist Ibrahim al-Khalili recorded a video report from the destroyed streets around the Shujayea neighbourhood in Gaza City.
Subjected to days of merciless air strikes, tanks blasts and artillery attacks amid an incursion by Israeli ground forces, much of Shujayea is now little but rubble and bombed out ruins of buildings, according to al-Khalili’s report.
“As you can see, relentless bombardment on the neighbourhood,” al-Khalili says in his video report. “From the early morning, Israeli ground forces entered the neighbourhood from multiple directions forcing civilians to displace and the situation remains dire,” he said, stepping over rubble as he recorded his report, explaining “this is as close as we can get”.
“Families [are] still trapped in Shujayea neighbourhood with unknown destiny,” he adds.
Smoke rises from the Beit Hanoon area of northern Gaza on Tuesday
