TEMPO.CO, Khan Younis - Israeli air strikes on residential blocks in south Gaza killed at least 47 Palestinians on Saturday, Nov. 18, medics said, after Israel again warned civilians to relocate as it girds for an onslaught against Hamas in the enclave's south after subduing the north.
The head of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Saturday it had received "horrifying" images and footage of scores of people killed and wounded in an attack on a UNRWA school in the Israeli-occupied north.
"These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on social media platform X. Israel's military did not immediately comment and Reuters was unable to reach Gaza health officials for comment.
Palestinian officials accused the Israeli army of forcibly evacuating most staff, patients, and displaced people from Gaza's largest hospital in the north and abandoning them to perilous journeys southwards on foot.
Israeli forces, which seized Al Shifa hospital in their offensive across north Gaza earlier this week, saying it concealed an underground Hamas command center, denied the accusation, saying evacuations were voluntary.
Israel vowed to annihilate the Hamas militant group that controls the tiny, coastal enclave after its Oct. 7 rampage into Israel in which its fighters killed 1,200 people and dragged 240 hostages into the enclave, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel has bombed to rubble much of Gaza City - the enclave's urban heart - ordered the depopulation of the northern half of the narrow strip and displaced around two-thirds of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians.
Gaza health authorities raised their death toll on Friday to more than 12,000, including 5,000 children. The United Nations deems those figures credible, though they are now updated only infrequently as war devastation has hampered communications.
An Israeli offensive into south Gaza could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled the Israeli storming of Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.
Overnight on Saturday, 26 Palestinians were killed and 23 wounded by an air strike on two apartments in a multi-story block in a busy residential district of Khan Younis, according to health officials.
