Israel kills dozens of displaced Palestinians in Gaza Strip in further evacuations | News on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Israel has killed at least 50 more Palestinians and injured more than 120 in Gaza after its military ordered new evacuations in the central and southern parts of the enclave.

Gaza's civil defense said on Wednesday that at least four people were killed and 18 injured in the latest Israeli attack on the Salah al-Din school, which houses displaced Palestinians in Gaza City.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP news agency that ten of the injured were children.

A father told AFP his son was killed while playing in the schoolyard during the strike. “We ran and saw that my son was dead,” he said, declining to give his name.

“What did this child do to deserve this? He had no rocket, no plane, no tank.”

The Israeli military said in a statement that the air force had carried out “a targeted attack on Hamas terrorists operating in a command and control center” on the school grounds.

“Hamas activists used the complex as a hideout and base for planning and carrying out attacks against [Israeli] troops and the State of Israel,” it said in a statement.

Israel has attacked more than 500 schools during its 10-month offensive on Gaza and accused Hamas of using them as hideouts. However, Israel has not provided sufficient evidence to support its claim, while Hamas denies the accusation.

In Bani Suheila, a town near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike killed seven Palestinians in a tent camp for displaced people, including two children and five women, medics said.

In Rafah, a civil defense team recovered the bodies of four more Palestinians. They were farmers working near al-Mawasi who were killed by Israeli tanks that opened fire on them without warning, Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum reported on Wednesday.

According to the Gaza Strip's Health Ministry, the Israeli military has killed at least 40,223 Palestinians. Most of the dead in Gaza were women and children, the United Nations Office for Human Rights said.

“Have mercy on us, world”

Meanwhile, the Israeli military on Wednesday issued new evacuation orders for several neighborhoods in Deir el-Balah, the enclave's most densely populated area, signaling an expansion of the army's ground operations from the south to the center of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces fired into the crowd, killing at least one person and wounding several others, medics and residents of the central Gaza city said.

Al Jazeera's Maram Humaid reported from Gaza that “a wave of terror and panic swept through the area” as people complied with orders and left their homes.

She said witnesses reported seeing Israeli tanks near the al-Mazraa school area southeast of Deir el-Balah.

“The tanks approached one of the schools and started shooting near civilians. Quadcopters also shot at people,” reported Dia Lafi, another Palestinian journalist.

“Those who want to flee have no place to go and no transportation.”

As Mohammad Yasser loaded mattresses into a car outside his family's emergency shelter, he cried out in despair: “Have mercy on us, world! Have mercy! We don't want aid or food stamps. Just stop this war.”

“The evacuation feels like a mass exodus. There is no way out. Deir el-Balah is the final stop. We will end up sitting on the streets,” Yasser told Al Jazeera.

“If it weren't for my children, I would stay even if it meant dying here. My daughter was born and grew up in this war. We have endured enough.”

The Gaza Strip government media office said more than 1.7 million Palestinians had been displaced to so-called humanitarian zones.

Only about nine percent of the Gaza Strip is considered “safe” for the Israeli military today. Israel has repeatedly launched attacks on these areas, which lack basic infrastructure and water and are overpopulated.

According to the UN, at least 90 percent of Gaza's 2.3 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began in October.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, condemned the attack on the school in Gaza on Wednesday, saying “some people were burned to death” in the “cruel attack on one of our UNRWA schools”.

“Is there still humanity?” Lazzarini wrote on the social media platform X. “Gaza is no longer a place for children. They are the first victims of this merciless war.”

“We must not allow the unbearable to become the new norm. Enough is enough. A ceasefire is more than overdue.”