GAZA: After weeks of Israeli bombardment that left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves.
Yasmeen Al-Dardasi said she and her family encountered wounded people they could not help during the evacuation from a district of the southern city of Khan Younis to the Central Correctional and Rehabilitation Center.
They spent a day under a tree before moving to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the scorching sun but not much else.
Al-Dardasi's husband has a damaged kidney and only one lung, but he has neither a mattress nor a blanket.
“We are not settled here either,” said Al-Dardasi, who, like many Palestinians, fears being uprooted once again.
Israel has said it will do everything to protect civilians.
Palestinians, many of whom have been displaced several times, say no place is immune from Israeli bombardment, which has reduced much of Gaza to rubble.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least 90 Palestinians in a designated humanitarian zone in the Al-Mawasi area on July 13, the territory's Health Ministry said, in an attack that Israel said targeted elusive Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif.
On Thursday, Gaza's Health Ministry said that Israeli military strikes in eastern Khan Younis had killed 14 people.
Entire neighborhoods have been razed in one of the most densely populated places in the world, where poverty and unemployment have long been widespread.
According to the United Nations, nine out of ten people in the Gaza Strip are now displaced.
Israeli soldiers told Saria Abu Mustafa and her family that they should run for safety because tanks were coming, she said. The family had no time to change and left in their prayer clothes.
After sleeping out in the open on sandy ground, they too found refuge in prison, amid piles of rubble and gaping holes in buildings from battles fought there. The inmates had been released long before Israel attacked.
“We didn't bring anything with us. We came here on foot, with children walking with us,” she said, adding that many of the women had five or six children and that water was hard to come by.
He was holding his niece, born during the conflict in which his father and brothers lost their lives.
According to Palestinian health sources, more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and ground offensive since October 7.
Hana Al-Sayed Abu Mustafa arrived in prison after being displaced six times.
If Egyptian, U.S. and Qatari mediators fail to secure a ceasefire they have long said is near, she and other Palestinians could be on the run again.
“Where should we go? Every place we go is dangerous,” he said.
