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UN agencies have planned a mass inoculation drive after the first case there in 25 years was confirmed. The Deir Al-Balah municipality says Zionist evacuation orders have so far displaced 250,000 people. In a statement posted on X, the Zionist military ordered residents in certain zones to move immediately to the west, as the area they are in is “considered a dangerous combat zone”. Zionist military strikes killed at least seven Palestinians on Monday, medics said. Two were killed in Deir Al-Balah, where around a million people were sheltering, two at a school in the Al-Nuseirat camp and three in the southern city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

Seven others were killed in two separate Zionist strikes, five in a car in Khan Younis and two people at a school in Gaza City, medics said. Later on Monday, a Zionist strike on a tent on the coast in Gaza City killed six Palestinians and wounded several other people, medics told Reuters. The new orders forced many families and patients to leave Al-Aqsa Hospital, the main medical facility in Deir Al-Balah, where hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people had taken shelter, for fear of bombardments. The hospital is close to the area covered by the evacuation notice.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said in a statement on X on Sunday night that an explosion approximately 250 m away from the MSF-supported Al-Aqsa Hospital triggered panic. “As a result, MSF is considering whether to suspend wound care for the time being, while trying to maintain life-saving treatment.” From around 650 patients, only 100 remain in the hospital, with seven in the intensive care unit, it said, citing Gaza’s health ministry.

“This situation is unacceptable. Al Aqsa has been operating well beyond capacity for weeks due to the lack of alternatives for patients. All warring parties must respect the hospital, as well as patients’ access to medical care,” it added. The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said fighters clashed with Zionist forces with anti-tank rockets, mortar bombs, and sniper fire in several areas across Gaza.

Gaza’s ministry of health called for the 100 patients inside the hospital, and the medical teams who had remained to care for them, to be protected. In a separate statement, it said Zionist military strikes have killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded 66 others across the enclave in the past 24 hours.

Sawsan Abu Afesh said she and her children had now been displaced 11 times. “I left half of my children behind me near my furniture and I am now with my little ones and my daughter, only God can help us...I have no money for transportation. I will go to area 17 where my family is staying on my foot. I took my kids and three are left behind. No idea where,” the woman said.

The escalation comes with little hope of an end in sight to the war as diplomacy by mediators, Qatar, Egypt and the US has so far failed to close the gap between the Zionist entity and Hamas, whose leaders traded blame over the lack of an accord. Mediators held meetings in the Egyptian capital on Sunday but reported no breakthrough in months of protracted negotiations to end the Gaza war as the fighting raged on.

A key sticking point has been the Zionist entity’s insistence that it keep control of several strategic areas, including the so-called Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, to stop Hamas from re-arming, something the group has refused to countenance. Cairo, which has been mediating the talks alongside Qatar and the United States, made clear on Monday it would not support continued Zionist control of the corridor, according to state-linked media. Egypt “reiterated to all parties that it will not accept any (Zionist) presence” along the corridor, Al-Qahera news reported, citing a high-level source. — Agencies