After Iran's rocket retaliation, the Israeli army commits massacres in Gaza's Khan Younis

On Tuesday, the Israeli army intensified air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip just after Iran launched a large-scale missile strike on Israel as part of a response to the assassination of the head of the political bureau of the Palestinian Hamas movement, Ismail Haniyeh, the Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, Abbas Nilforoushan.

"In response to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and the martyr Nilforoushan, we targeted the heart of the occupied Palestinian territories [...] Important bases and headquarters in the Zionist entity were targeted with dozens of ballistic missiles," the Iranian Revolutionary Guard said in a press statement.

"If the Zionist entity responds to the Iranian targeting, it will be met with more violent attacks," the statement added.

Once the Iranian attack ended, the Israeli army intensified ground and air attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing at least 67 Palestinians overnight Tuesday, according to Palestinian security and medical sources.

'Revenge' on Gaza

In separate interviews with The New Arab, local eyewitnesses said that the Israeli army launched a surprise attack in the eastern areas of the city of Khan Younis in the south of Gaza and surrounded several Palestinian homes in the Ma’an and Al-Fakhari areas of the town amid heavy gunfire.

"We lived a terrifying night without even being able to escape their homes," said one resident of the area, noting that the Israeli gunfire killed and injured dozens of civilians.

Moreover, the Israeli army prevented the teams of civil defence from reaching the victims throughout the night, but they were able to reach them after the Israeli forces withdrew to retrieve the dead.

Medical sources in the southern Gaza Strip said that civil defence and medical teams were able to recover the bodies of at least 32 Palestinians, most of them women and children, from the eastern part of Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip.

Among the injured was Ahmed Al-Zard, a Palestinian journalist, who was seriously wounded in the back. In addition, the army killed five members of his family, some of whom died due to severe bleeding.

"We were watching Iranian missiles in the sky of the Gaza Strip as they bombed Israel [...] Minutes after they ended, we were surprised by the Israeli warplanes targeting the house we were in, and we did not know what to do [...] We tried to contact the ambulance and civil defence crews, but they told us that the army was besieging the area where we live and preventing them from reaching us," al-Zard remarked to TNA. 

"I saw five members of my family die in front of me, including my little brother, my uncle, his wife and my cousins, while I, my mother, my sister and my cousin were injured [...] We heard the sounds of Israeli soldiers approaching the place and shooting everywhere," he added.

Al-Zard remained trapped with the rest of his injured family under the rubble for more than eight hours, while hearing gunfire everywhere and the voices of neighbours calling for help before they were targeted by Israeli tanks, planes and snipers.

"It was a deliberate extermination of the residents of Khan Younis [...] It is clear that the Israeli army wanted to take revenge on us because of the Iranian missiles, even though we had nothing to do with them, and they know that very well," he said. 

Amani Baroud, 35, also spoke to TNA about this horrific night. The Israeli army also surrounded her house, located in the town of Ma'an in the eastern part of Khan Younis, and then Israeli soldiers opened fire directly at her house.

"For a moment, my family and I felt that the army would storm the house and kill us all [...] I hid with my three children and my husband under the bed, hoping that it would protect us from the Israeli bullets [...] I prayed a lot to God to protect us or that we would all die because I cannot bear to lose any of my family members," the young woman recalled to TNA.  

"The Israeli army deliberately stormed the area where we live and besieged us to prove that they are capable of killing us all and that if any country tries to support us in Gaza, we will be the ones paying the price," she said. 

Language of death and destruction

In al-Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, residents also experienced a difficult night as the Israeli army intensified artillery shelling of most of the camp while launching hundreds of flares into the sky of the camp.

Locals from the camp described that they felt as if the war had "started again", explaining that they did not know what to do, whether to stay in their homes and await their fate or evacuate their homes, but it was too late and there was no safe place for them.

The Israeli army killed at least 10 Palestinians and injured more than 20 others after targeting the Khalid Ibn al-Walid School, which houses displaced people in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.

"As soon as we saw the Iranian missiles, we were afraid that the Israeli army would take revenge on us, but I did not expect that they would target the school where we live [...] It is our last shelter," said Zainab Omar, a 65-year-old displaced Palestinian.

"This army does not know the meaning of humanity and only knows the language of killing, death and destruction," she added. 

The same bloody scene was witnessed by the displaced people in the Masqat School in the Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City, where the Israeli army killed at least six Palestinians, most of them children, in a Israeli strike while they were sleeping inside the school.

The Israeli army also killed eight other Palestinians after targeting their home in the Shujaiya neighbourhood, east of the city, according to Palestinian medical sources at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.