Israeli troops storm back into eastern Khan Younis; bodies recovered in hospital ruins

Israeli troops fought their way back into an eastern section of Khan Younis in a surprise raid, residents said on Monday, sending people who had returned to abandoned homes in the ruins of the southern Gaza Strip’s main city fleeing once more.

Elsewhere in Khan Younis, scores more bodies were recovered from what Palestinian authorities said were mass graves on the site of the city’s main hospital, abandoned by Israeli troops. Further south there were fresh airstrikes on Rafah, the last refuge where more than half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people have sought shelter.

Israel abruptly pulled most of its ground troops out of the southern Gaza Strip this month after some of the most intense fighting of the sevenmonth-old war. Residents have begun making their way home to previously unaccessible neighbourhoods of what had been the enclave’s second-biggest city, finding homes reduced to rubble and unrecovered dead in the streets.

“This morning, many families who had left here in the past two weeks to go back home to Abassan came back. They were too frightened,” Ahmed Rezik, 42, told Reuters from a school where he is sheltering in the western part of Khan Younis, referring to a district in the east.

“They said tanks pushed in the eastern area of the town under heavy fire, and they had to run for lives,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after fighters from the Hamas Islamist militant group that runs the enclave burst across the border fence on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

Israel responded by launching a ground assault on Gaza, vowing to annihilate Hamas.

More than 34,000 people have since been confirmed killed according to Gaza health authorities, with thousands more bodies feared lost in the rubble.