Displaced Gazans were forced to flee Hamad city on Sunday (August 11), after Israel issued a massive evacuation order in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, overnight.

Gazans flee as Israel army pushes into Khan Yunis

The area is a residential complex in Khan Younis and the expanded evacuation order has forced tens of thousands of residents to flee as Israeli airstrikes overnight destroyed two buildings.

The Israeli military said it was attacking militants from the Hamas group - which administered Gaza before the war - who were using those areas to stage attacks and fire rockets.

As they folded their tents and gathered their belongings fleeing Gazans said they had been forced to move 6 times, others 12 times to avoid Israeli attacks.

"There’s no safe place, no safe place at all," said on Gazan woman leaving Hamad city, Oum Ayman.

"I don’t know where to go. I’m sick, my wife is sick, and we are 14 people. I can’t even find a car to leave, and I swear, I have no money to go anywhere. I have nothing," said another fleeing Gazan, Mahmoud Abdrabbuh.

The evacuation instruction in Khan Younis covered districts in the centre, east and west, making it one of the largest such orders in the 10-month-old conflict, two days after tanks returned to the east of the city.

The announcement 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."

On Saturday (August 10), an Israeli airstrike on a school where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in Gaza City killed at least 90 people, according to the civil defense service, prompting an international outcry.

(Production: Hatem Khaled, Arafat Barbakh, Dina Sakr)