GAZA: After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere to go, hundreds of Palestinians have arrived at a former prison in Gaza built to hold criminals and thieves.
Yasmeen Al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded they could not help as they evacuated from a district in 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 provides protection from the sun, but not much else.
Al-Dardasi's husband has a damaged kidney and only one lung, but no mattress or blanket.
“We are not settled here either,” said Al-Dardasi, who, like many Palestinians, fears being uprooted again.
Israel said it was doing everything to protect civilians.
Palestinians, many of whom have been displaced multiple times, say no place is safe 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 the elusive military chief of Hamas, Mohammed Deif.
On Thursday, the Gaza Ministry of Health said that Israeli military strikes on areas east of Khan Younis killed 14 people.
Entire neighborhoods 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 UN, nine out of ten people in Gaza are now internally displaced.
Israeli soldiers told Saria Abu Mustafa and her family that they should run for safety because tanks were on the way, she said. The family did not have time to change and left in prayer clothes.
After sleeping outside on the sandy ground, they too found refuge in the prison, among piles of rubble and gaping holes in buildings from the battles that had taken place there. The detainees had been released long before Israel attacked.
“We didn't take anything with us. We came here on foot with children walking with us,” she said, adding that many women had five or six children and that water was hard to come by.
He held his granddaughter, who was born during the conflict that killed her father and brothers.
More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and ground offensive since October 7, Palestinian health officials say.
Hana Al-Sayed Abu Mustafa ended up in prison after being displaced six times.
If Egyptian, American and Qatari mediators fail to secure a ceasefire they have long said is close, she and other Palestinians could be on the move again.
“Where should we go? All the places we go are dangerous,” she said.
