GAZA - After weeks of Israeli bombardment 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 passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis towards its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility.
They spent a day under a tree before moving on to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the blistering sun, but not much else.
Dardasi’s husband has a damaged kidney and just one lung, but no mattress or blanket.
“We are not settled here either,” said Dardasi, who like many Palestinians fears she will be uprooted once again.
Palestinians, many of whom have been displaced several times, say nowhere is free of Israeli bombardment, which has reduced much of Gaza to rubble.
An Israeli air strike 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 Hamas’ elusive military chief Mohammed Deif.
On Thursday, Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli military strikes on areas in eastern Khan Younis had killed 14 people.
Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened 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 in 10 people across Gaza are now internally displaced.
Israeli soldiers told Saria Abu Mustafa and her family that they should flee for safety as tanks were on their way, she said. The family had no time to change so they left in their prayer clothes.
After sleeping outside on sandy ground, they too found refuge in the prison, among piles of rubble and gaping holes in buildings from the battles which were fought there.
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