The Israeli forces incessantly shelling areas around two hospitals in Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern part of the Gaza Striptrapping doctors, patients and displaced persons.

Health officials in Gaza said at least 50 Palestinians had been killed in the past 24 hours in Khan Younis, including two children by an Israeli airstrike on a home.

Israeli forces have now surrounded the city, which is under almost non-stop air and ground fire, residents complain.

Palestinian doctors point out that Israeli tanks have blockaded the city’s two main hospitals that are still functioning, Nasser and al-Amal, and are shelling targets around them, trapping medical teams, patients and displaced persons who have taken refuge inside and around medical facilities.

Most of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents are now crammed into Khan Younis and smaller towns further north and south, after being driven from the northern part of the enclave in the first phase of Israel’s military operations.

Moreover, due to the blockade of the hospitals, which Israel complains that Hamas uses as bases to launch attacks – something the Palestinian organization denies – it is impossible to transport the wounded and dead there.

Israeli forces’ fire has forced many displaced people to start searching for safe shelter again, doctors and residents said.

Residents complained yesterday, Wednesday, that warnings by Israeli forces to evacuate civilians from areas in the line of fire came after operations had begun and the main road leading out of Khan Younis had already been closed.

At the same time, the UN announced yesterday that Israeli tanks attacked its facilities in Gaza, where displaced Palestinians had taken refuge, killing at least nine people and injuring 75. Israel denied that its forces were responsible for this attack, implying that the Hamas may have bombed the building. He even added that he is investigating the incident.

1.5 million people are at risk

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that less than 20% of the Palestinian enclave, about 60 square kilometers in the south, is shelter for 1.5 million people, while warning that “the dramatic escalation of conflict threatens their survival”. .

“Every hospital in the Gaza Strip is overcrowded and facing shortages of medical supplies, fuel, food and water. Many are home to thousands of displaced families. And now two more facilities (in Khan Younis) are at risk of being lost due to the conflicts. The cumulative effects on the health system are devastating and immediate action must be taken,” the ICRC said in a statement.

Thomas White, director of the UN agency for Palestine refugees in Gaza, today criticized Israel’s military operations in neighborhoods full of vulnerable civilians.

“Fierce clashes near the remaining hospitals in Khan Younis, including Nasser and al-Amal, have effectively led to the encirclement of the facilities, terrorizing the workers, patients and displaced people trapped inside,” he said in a statement.

“Al-Khair Hospital was closed after patients, including women who had just had a caesarean section, were evacuated in the middle of the night,” he added.

In northern Gaza residents report that they are almost out of food, mainly flour, and are grinding animal feed to eat.

Israel’s military said today it has killed more than 9,000 Hamas militants and lost 220 soldiers in the three-and-a-half-month war, which erupted after the Palestinian movement’s unprecedented attack on Israel.

Meanwhile in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry announced that at least 370 people have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7.

Today medics said Israeli forces killed a 24-year-old Palestinian man in a village near Jenin after Israeli soldiers surrounded his family’s home and there was an exchange of fire.