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.
Israel has said it goes out of its way to protect civilians in its war with the Palestinian Hamas group, which runs Gaza and stormed Israel in the first week of October last year, that sparked the latest conflict.
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 Mohamed 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 UN, nine in ten 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. Inmates 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 of the women had five or six children with them and that water was hard to find.
She held her niece, who was born during the conflict, which has killed her father and brothers.
Hamas-led fighters burst into southern Israel from Gaza in the first week of October last year..
More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the air and ground offensive Israel launched in response, Palestinian health officials say. Hana al-Sayed Abu Mustafa arrived at the prison after being displaced six times.
If Egyptian, US and other mediators fail to secure a ceasefire they have long said is close, she and other Palestinians may be on the move once again. “Where should we go? All the places that we go to are dangerous,” she said.