Palestinians flee destroyed Khan Younis as new Israel attack begins

Crowds fleeing Khan Younis after an Israeli evacuation order gave way to empty streets on Friday as Palestinian residents tried to escape a new Israeli military operation in Gaza's main southern area.

"They threw leaflets at us, ordering us to evacuate", Reem Abu Hayya told AFP, referring to the flyers that Israeli forces drop from planes to order the evacuation of areas ahead of a military operation.

The Khan Younis area had already seen evacuation orders in late July, and heavy fighting that devastated the area earlier this year.

"We don't know where we're going, and we have sick and disabled people with us. Where can we go?" Abu Hayya asked AFP as she stood on the street in front of a building reduced to a pile of rebar and broken concrete.

In a besieged territory that has been consistently bombed over the past 10 months and where supplies enter with great difficulty, people carried all they could as they fled on Thursday.

AFP journalists saw one young man carrying planks of wood loosely tied in bundles, to be used as shelter structure or fuel in the near future.

With petrol scarce, only the most fortunate drove, often with mattresses piled high on the car roof. The vast majority walked. They carried their belongings in plastic and garbage bags, on donkey-pulled carts, bikes, strollers or wheelchairs.

By dusk, streets of Khan Younis stood completely deserted and eerily quiet, AFP journalists reported. Only the ruins of buildings damaged in earlier strikes still stood.

The flyers dropped Thursday ordered residents to leave eastern towns of Khan Younis governorate including Al-Salqa, Al-Qarara, Bani Suheila, and neighbourhoods in the city of Khan Younis.

"Hamas and terrorist organisations continue to launch rockets from your areas", read the flyers which echoed past orders and warned that the Israeli army "will act forcefully against these elements".

By Friday the United Nations' humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that "at least 60,000 Palestinians may have moved towards western Khan Younis in the past 72 hours", said UN spokeswoman Florencia Soto Nino.

Late last month Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on social media site X that only "14 percent of areas in Gaza" were not subject to evacuation orders.

'We are exhausted'

On Friday, the military said it launched a new operation in Khan Younis following "intelligence indicating the presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure" there.

"The troops are engaging in combat both above and below-ground to eliminate terrorists in the area while locating and dismantling weaponry and terrorist infrastructure," the military said in a statement.

The military has often returned in Gaza to areas where it had previously completed major operations against Palestinian militants, only to find them resurfacing or to act on intelligence about the location of hostages.

"Enough! For both, the Jews and Hamas! Both of them should look at the people of Gaza, have mercy on us for God's sake," Ahmed al-Najjar, angry at the war and the prospect of yet another displacement, told AFP.

War in Gaza began when Hamas Palestinian militants on October 7 attacked southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 39,699 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry of the territory, which does not provide details of civilian and militant deaths.

Mohammad al-Farra, from Sheikh Nasser in the east of Khan Younis, also expressed frustration at the several displacements his family has lived through.

"We were the first to return to our home... as soon as the military operation in our area ended, to escape the heat, the displacement, and the hardship", the 46-year-old told AFP.

"Then the occupation returned to drive us out again, making us suffer the tragedy multiple times over", he said, referring to Israel.

"We are exhausted. The war must end immediately so that we can feel human again, even just a little".