Palestinians bury dead in hospital courtyard as Israeli forces attack Khan Younis

Israel is closing in on Khan Younis, killing and wounding scores of Palestinians in its wake after incapacitated local health facilities already struggling to attend to their patients, according to health authorities in the area.

The advance has also seen the highest number of Israeli soldiers killed in a single incident since the beginning of its aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7, with 21 soldiers reported killed in an explosion on Monday night.

The clashes in Khan Younis are an escalation in the Occupation’s ground operations even as the international community increasingly challenges Tel Aviv’s continuation of the war.

Israel said on Tuesday that it carried out an “extensive” 24-hour operation to besiege Khan Younis, which it described as a “stronghold” for a Hamas brigade.

Twenty-one Israeli soldiers were killed in the operation on Monday when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a tank stationed to protect a unit dismantling nearby “structures.” Two of the soldiers were killed in the tank, it said, and two two-story buildings collapsed due to an explosion likely caused by explosives laid by Israeli troops.

The Occupation also committed “massacres” to the west of Khan Younis on Monday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, who described ambulances being prevented from reaching patients and severely strained facilities at two Khan Younis hospitals.

Ambulances at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s headquarters in Khan Younis are being directly targeted by the Occupation, it said on Monday morning, adding that “anyone attempting to move in the area” would come under fire.

The ambulances are therefore unable to access the wounded in an area that has been under heavy bombardment since Saturday and is therefore limited, the Red Crescent said.

It also said it has lost all contact with its crew at the Amal Hospital, an affiliate with the agency in Khan Younis, and that the facility is surrounded by Israeli tanks.

Israeli forces continue to restrict access to the Nasser Medical Complex, one of the largest health facilities in the southern Gaza Strip.

The siege forced people to "bury 40 martyrs in a mass grave in the complex's courtyard," the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said on Monday, amid an increasing number of "serious injuries” surpassing "the capacity of operating rooms and intensive care units at the Nasser Complex."

Health authorities have feared for weeks that Israeli troops would reenact at hospitals in south Gaza the situation which took place at Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza’s north.

In November, thousands of people sheltering at the northern hospital were placed under siege, mass arrests were carried out and facility services collapsed.