On Monday, Israeli forces made their way back to the east of the city of Khan Yunis, in a surprise raid that forced residents who had returned to their homes to flee again, while more than 200 bodies were recovered from mass graves in the courtyard of the Nasser Medical Complex, the main hospital in the city.
To the south, Israel launched new air strikes on Rafah, the last refuge to which more than half of the Strip’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge. Israel suddenly withdrew most of its ground forces from southern Gaza this month, after violent battles. Residents began returning to their homes in Khan Yunis, the second largest city in the Strip, in neighborhoods that were previously inaccessible, where they found homes turned into rubble, and bodies scattered in the streets.
Ahmed Rizq (42 years old) said from inside a school where he took refuge in the western part of Khan Yunis: “Today morning, many families who returned in the past weeks to the Abasan area were displaced again and were terrified,” referring to an area in the east.
He added: “They said that the tanks entered again in force, and suddenly, under cover of heavy gunfire, so they left to protect their lives.”
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in the war waged by Israel on Gaza, and thousands more are missing, whose bodies are feared to still be under the rubble.
On the ruins of what was known as Nasser Hospital, the largest hospital in southern Gaza, emergency workers wearing white suits were seen pulling bodies from the ground with hand tools and a backhoe. The Department of Emergency Services said that more than 200 bodies have been found since last Saturday.
Israel says that it was forced to fight inside hospitals, because Hamas fighters were working from there, which is denied by medical teams and the movement. Authorities in Gaza say that the bodies recovered so far are from only one of at least three mass graves found at the site.
Palestinian officials accused Israel of carrying out “executions” in the hospital and covering up the crimes by burying the bodies with bulldozers. Israel denies this.
Relatives come to take their loved ones for reburial. Family members brought the body of Osama Al-Shoubji, one of those whose bodies were recovered from the hospital, to the cemetery on Monday, to be reburied next to his sister, to whom he once donated his kidney, when she was sick.
Osama’s wife, Sumaya, said: “My little daughter asked me to visit her father’s grave. I tell her as soon as we bury him, we will visit him. Thank God. “The scene is difficult, but we find some solace after burying him.”
She was holding some flowers in her hand, and in the other hand she was holding the hand of their little daughter, Hind. The little girl said next to the new grave: “He loved me, he used to buy me things, and he used to take me for walks.”
Gaza residents reported air strikes on other areas, including Rafah, where doctors performed a caesarean section the day before to remove a newborn from the womb of his mother, who was killed.
In Nuseirat in central Gaza, officials said an air strike destroyed solar panels that the hospital relies on for energy.