GAZA: Israeli forces launched strikes of the main city in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, where hospitals were overrun with scores of Palestinian dead and wounded.
In what appeared to be the biggest ground assault since a truce collapsed last week, residents said Israeli tanks had entered the eastern parts of Khan Younis for the first time, crossing from the Israeli border fence and advancing west.
Some took up positions inside the town of Bani Suhaila on Khan Younis' eastern outskirts, while others continued further and were stationed on the edge of a housing development called Hamad City, residents said. After days of ordering residents to flee the area, Israeli forces dropped new leaflets on Tuesday with instructions to stay inside shelters during the assault.
CHILDREN'S BODIES ON THE FLOOR
At Khan Younis' main Nasser hospital, the wounded arrived by ambulance, car, flatbed truck and donkey cart after what survivors described as a strike on a school being used as a shelter for the displaced.
Inside a ward, almost every inch of floor space was taken up by the wounded, medics hurrying from patient to patient.
A doctor carried the small limp body of a dead boy in a track suit and placed him in a corner, arms splayed across the blood-smeared tile. On the floor next to him, surrounded by discarded bandages and rubber gloves, lay a wounded boy and girl, their limbs tangled with the stands holding the IV drips in their arms.
Two young girls were being treated, still covered in dust from the collapse of the house that had buried their family.
"My parents are under the rubble," sobbed one. "I want my mum, I want my mum, I want my family."
Outside, men carried corpses in white and bloodied shrouds to be taken away for funerals. Around a dozen bodies lay on the ground. Five or six were taken away in a motorcycle cart.
Aisha al Raqb, a 70-year-old woman, said her son Iyad was among the dead and held out a blood-stained hand.
"This is his blood. This is his precious blood. May Allah have mercy on his soul. My darling. I (want to) smell his scent, smell his scent, oh God, oh God," she said.
Gaza health ministry spokesperson Ashra al Qidra said at least 43 corpses had already reached Nasser hospital that morning.
"Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip are totally collapsing, they cannot deal with the quantity and quality of injuries that arrive at the hospitals," he said.
According to Gaza health officials deemed reliable by the United Nations, more than 15,900 people are confirmed dead, with thousands more missing and feared buried under rubble.
Gazans say there is no safe place left to go, with remaining towns and shelters already overwhelmed. Israel has continued to bomb the areas where it is telling people to go. — Reuters
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