Gaza City, August 11 (RHC)-- Tens of thousands of people in Gaza have fled the northern neighborhoods of Khan Yunis after Israel issued fresh evacuation orders ahead of a new offensive against the southern city. 

Media reports said Sunday that a large number of residents left their homes and shelters in the middle of the night to areas already overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

In Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip, the evacuation instruction covered districts in the center, east and west, making it one of the largest such orders in the 10-month-old Israeli aggression.   The announcement by the Israeli military was posted on X and in text and audio messages to residents’ phones. “For your own safety, you must evacuate immediately to the newly created humanitarian zone. The area you are in is considered a dangerous combat zone.”

Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in the besieged Palestinian strip. 

Khan Yunis, Gaza's main southern governorate, had already been hit with several evacuation orders in the past weeks and devastated by months of bombardment that have reduced residential blocks to piles of rubble.

“We’re exhausted. This is the 10th time I and my family have had to leave our shelter,” said Zaki Mohammad, 28 years of age.   “People are carrying their belongings, their children, their hopes and their fears and running towards the unknown, because there is no safe place,” he told Reuters via a chat app. “We are running from death to death.”

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations.  Separately, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said that the new evacuation orders sent many people fleeing from the early hours of Sunday. 

The UN official says people in Gaza are trapped and have nowhere to go.   In a post on X, he said more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza in the past few days. 

“Some are only able to carry their children with them, some carry their whole lives in one small bag,” he added.   “They are going to overcrowded places where shelters are already overflowing with families. They have lost everything and need everything. Unlike in other wars, the people of Gaza are trapped and have nowhere to go.” Lazzarini also said:

Areas designated as humanitarian zones, like al-Mawasi in western Khan Yunis where residents were being sent, have been bombed several times by Israeli forces.   The army also carried out a strike in Khan Yunis on Sunday, wounding several people who were treated at Nasser Hospital.

"They were all civilians and they were shopping in the market when a missile hit and left people lying in the streets," said Awad Barbakh, a resident.

Incessant Israeli strikes on Gaza continue to claim Palestinian lives as the regime is pressing ahead with air and artillery strikes on the blockaded territory.

In Khan Yunis, several Palestinians were killed and many others injured after Israeli warplanes carried out an airstrike.  Also, at least a Palestinian was killed and several others were injured as several areas in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza were shelled.

On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike on a school where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in Gaza City killed more than 100 people, prompting an international outcry.

The Israeli war on Gaza, which began in October, has claimed the lives of nearly 40-thousand and injured over 92-thousand others.