Grim Cycle of Death at a Hospital in Gaza

Bodies are moved at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, in a file picture taken on November 14 - AFP
Bodies are moved at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, in a file picture taken on November 14 - AFP
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Grim Cycle of Death at a Hospital in Gaza

Bodies are moved at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, in a file picture taken on November 14 - AFP
Bodies are moved at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, in a file picture taken on November 14 - AFP

A middle-aged man with a blank, shattered expression walked slowly down a ramp at the hospital, gently cradling in his arms a tiny body wrapped in a white shroud.

After the collapse of a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas, the Nasser hospital's morgue in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, was full once again on Saturday.

A handful of women wept for their own children, while a group of men nearby prayed for the dead.

"My son Mohammed tried to get the women and children out of our tent" at a makeshift camp where they had sheltered inside a school, Jumana Murad said of the 19-year-old.

"But a piece of shrapnel hit him in the head... I saw his brains," she told AFP, before bursting into tears.

The family had left their home in Gaza City after the Israeli army told around 1.1 million people in the north of the Palestinian territory to move to avoid the fighting following Hamas militants' unprecedented October 7 attacks on Israel.

"They tossed out leaflets to tell us 'you will be safe in the south', so we went there," she said.

"My son is dead, my son Mohammed, who was a nice boy, and who listened to me whenever I needed to get something off my chest."

At her side, her daughter Joelle Murad shook in her red embroidered dressing gown, screaming out to God and to anyone in earshot.

"Why was my brother, who had nothing to do with militant groups, killed?" she cried. "What did we do? They want Hamas? What does that have to do with us?"

Men at Nasser hospital -- doctors, medical technicians, victims' loved ones -- brought out the corpses in white body bags.

Families gathered for one last look at the dead, caressing their hair, touching their hands or kissing their faces, sometimes still stained with blood.

To Gazans, the dead are "martyrs", so their bodies are not given the traditional Muslim funeral cleansing.

The bodies are carried out on stretchers, or on long metal trays from the morgue's cold rooms -- where electricity supplies are intermittent to non-existent.

Funerals are carried out quickly, and family members cannot always be reached, but the small crowd in the courtyard paused and gathered before all the bodies, reciting prayers for the dead.

The wrapped remains were loaded into ill-suited civilian vehicles -- ambulances are only for the living -- and taken away to rapidly filling cemeteries.

Behind them, more bodies were coming out of the morgue, one more mother cried for her son and the crowd readied for another funeral prayer.



Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

Israel’s military ordered the evacuation Saturday of a crowded part of Gaza designated as a humanitarian zone, saying it is planning an operation against Hamas militants in Khan Younis, including parts of Muwasi, a makeshift tent camp where thousands are seeking refuge.

The order comes in response to rocket fire that Israel says originates from the area. It's the second evacuation issued in a week in an area designated for Palestinians fleeing other parts of Gaza. Many Palestinians have been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel's punishing air and ground campaign.

On Monday, after the evacuation order, multiple Israeli airstrikes hit around Khan Younis, killing at least 70 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, citing figures from Nasser Hospital.

The area is part of a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) “humanitarian zone” to which Israel has been telling Palestinians to flee to throughout the war. Much of the area is blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. About 1.8 million Palestinians are sheltering there, according to Israel's estimates. That's more than half Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The UN estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.