People hiding in the southern Gaza Strip after fleeing their homes in the north at the start of the war said on Saturday they had nowhere to go safely amid Israeli airstrikes, according to Reuters.

The town of Khan Younis is the target of Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire in a new phase of the war after fighting resumed on Friday following the end of a week-long truce.

Its population has grown in recent weeks as several hundred thousand people from northern Gaza have fled south at Israel’s behest.

Some camp in tents, others in schools, and others sleep on stairs or in front of several hospitals that operate in the city. A World Health Organization official said on Friday that one of the hospitals was “like something out of a horror movie” as hundreds of injured children and adults waited for treatment.

Abu Wael Nasrallah, 80, expressed disbelief at the latest order by the Israeli army to move further south to Rafah on the Egyptian border. On Friday, children were injured during Israeli strikes in this city.

The message was delivered through leaflets dropped from the sky over several areas of Khan Yunis.

“This is nonsense,” Nasrallah told Reuters. He followed Israeli evacuation orders and left the northern Gaza Strip at the start of the war, which erupted on October 7 when Hamas militants crossed into Israeli territory and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Some 193 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire ended, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday, adding to the death toll of more than 15,000 reported by Palestinian health authorities.

Israel says it is working to minimize civilian casualties as fighting moves south.

The United States pressed Israel last week for clear plans to limit civilian casualties in its offensive in the south, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have not provided clear assurances, a senior U.S. official said Friday, and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was finishing his trip to the region.

A senior Netanyahu aide told reporters on Saturday that Israel had notified humanitarian groups of “safer areas”.

Mark Regev stated that Israel did not ask the entire population of southern Gaza to leave. “Only from those areas, those specific areas where we know there will be heavy fighting, we have asked people to move.”

“Night of Fear”

Nasrallah said that he and his family would stay put because they had already lost everything.

“There is nothing to fear. Our houses are gone, our possessions are gone, our money is gone, our sons are killed, some are disabled. What is left to cry about?” he says.

The mother of four, who gave her name as Samira, said she fled Gaza City to the south with her children after Israel began shelling the city last month. Now they are hiding with friends in a house west of Khan Yunis.

She said Friday night was one of the scariest since she arrived: “A night of horrors.”

She and other residents said they feared the intensity of shelling in Khan Younis and the nearby city of Deir el-Balah meant an Israeli ground invasion of the south was imminent.

Another man, surnamed Yamen, said he, his wife and six children fled the north a few weeks ago and were sleeping in the school.

“Where to after Deir al-Abal, after Khan Yunis?” – he said. “I don’t know where to put my family.”

The UN estimates that up to 1.8 million people in the Gaza Strip – or nearly 80 percent of the population – have been forced to flee during Israel’s devastating bombing campaign.

In response to the October 7 attack, Israel vowed to destroy the Gaza-based Hamas group.