Crowds fleeing Khan Yunis 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 said, referring to the flyers that Israeli forces drop from planes to order the evacuation of areas ahead of a military operation.
The Khan Yunis 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 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.
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 Yunis stood completely deserted and eerily quiet, 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 Yunis governorate including Al Salqa, Al Qarara, Bani Suheila, and neighbourhoods in the city of Khan Yunis.
"Hamas and fighter 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".
Late last month Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on social media site X that only "14 per cent of areas in Gaza" were not subject to evacuation orders.
On Friday, the military said it launched a new operation in Khan Yunis following "intelligence indicating the presence of fighters and terror," there.
"The troops are engaging in combat both above and below-ground to eliminate fighters in the area while locating and dismantling weaponry and fighter infrastructure," the military said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said on Friday that it killed two members of the Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, while Hizbullah confirmed the deaths of three of its members so far. The information could not be independently verified.
Israel's army said it attacked a militia military compound in the Naqoura area, not far from the Israeli border. Hizbullah, in its confirmation of the three deaths, did not say where and when these occurred.
It did claim that it has retailiated with attacks on targets in northern Israel. Hizbullah fired, among other things, a "salvo of Katyusha rockets, "towards Kiryat Shmona in retaliation for the Naqoura attack, it said.
Hizbullah and Israel have been fighting daily firefights since the Gaza war began in October.
More than 120 civilians have been killed, most of them on the Lebanese side. In addition, more than 350 Hezbollah members and Israeli soldiers have died in the conflict. - AFP/dpa
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