Israel orders Shujaiya evacuation, amid new displacement woes

The Israeli military has ordered new evacuation orders to residents in areas of the eastern Gaza City suburb of Shujaiya, setting off a new wave of displacement on Sunday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, Palestinian medics said.

Footage circulated on social and Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shujaiya on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.

Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, residents said – the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.

In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the urban camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij since Saturday night.

Hospital director wounded by Israeli strike

In north Gaza, where Israeli forces have been carrying out a brutal offensive and siege under the so-called ‘General’s Plan’, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, injuring its director Hussam Abu Safiya.

“This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost,” Abu Safiya said in a video statement circulated by the health ministry on Sunday.

“We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us,” he said from his hospital bed.

Hamas accused Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.

Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in north Gaza that are barely operational as the health ministry said the Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical, food and fuel supplies from reaching them.

Residents in three embattled north Gaza towns – Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun – said Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in an area that Israel said months ago had been cleared of militants.

Palestinians say Israel appears determined to rid the area permanently of its Palestinian population in an ethnic-cleansing campaign. Israel has also been accused of wanting to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, uprooted nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million population at least once, while reducing wide swathes of the narrow coastal territory to rubble.