Israeli forces are stepping up their strikes in the southern Gaza Strip, pounding areas near the enclave’s largest hospital still operating, forcing sick and displaced people away as they fear the clashes will flatten the town of Khan Younis.

The heaviest fighting so far this year has been raging in Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of people who fled the northern Gaza Strip at the start of the war, now in its fourth month, have sought refuge.

The non-governmental organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which has doctors at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said patients and displaced persons who had sought refuge there were fleeing in panic.

In Rafa, further south, 16 bodies lay on the bloody floor outside a morgue, most in white shrouds and some in plastic bags: some members of the Zameli family killed in a blow that destroyed their home overnight.

According to the authorities, a total of 17 people were killed.

After more than three months of war that has killed more than 24,000 Palestinians and destroyed most of the Gaza Strip, Israel says it plans to scale back its ground operations and switch to more targeted strikes.

But before doing so, it seems determined to capture all of Khan Younis, which Israel says is the central base of Hamas militants who launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that killed around 1,200 people.

Battles near the hospital

Residents of Khan Younis said today that fighting has come closer than ever to Nasser Hospital, the largest in the Palestinian enclave still operating, raising fears that it will come under siege and be forced to close, like Shifa, the main hospital. in the northern part of the Gaza Strip which was captured by Israeli forces in November.

“What is happening now in Khan Younis is absolute madness: the occupation is shelling the city from all directions, from the air and by land,” said Abu el Abed, 45, who has been displaced with his family of seven repeatedly since he left Gaza City.

“It’s like what happened in Gaza before they took control of al-Shifa hospital,” he said by phone from Rafah, where he was looking for food and possible places to relocate his family. “For the past three days they have completely destroyed residential areas in the city center and also in the eastern city of Abasan,” he added.

Two-thirds of Gaza’s hospitals, including all medical facilities in the northern part of the enclave, have ceased to function completely and the rest are partially functional.

“According to the MSF surgeon at Nasser Hospital, last week Israeli forces heavily shelled an area near the hospital without first issuing an evacuation order, prompting patients and many thousands of displaced people who had sought refuge in Nasser to flee in panic,” the NGO said. in X.

In a video posted by the head of MSF’s mission in Palestine, Leo Khans, who is in Nasser Hospital, he said that the clashes had come “very close”.

“We hear a lot of shelling around. A lot of shots,” he stressed. “The wounded we are treating, many of them have lost their legs, they have lost their hands. There are particularly complex injuries that require multiple operations. And we don’t have the ability to do that now. The situation must stop.”