KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Israel intensified its bombardment in and around Gaza’s second-largest city early Tuesday, as ambulances and private cars came racing into a local hospital carrying people wounded in a bloody new phase of the war in Gaza.
Under U.S. pressure to prevent further mass casualties, Israel says it is being more precise as it widens its offensive into southern Gaza after obliterating much of the north. Aerial bombardment and the ground offensive have already driven three-fourths of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes.
At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, ambulances brought dozens of wounded people in throughout the night. At one point, a car pulled up and man emerged carrying a young boy in a bloody shirt, whose hand had been blown off.
“What’s happening here is imaginable,” said Hamza al-Bursh, who lives in the neighborhood of Maan, one of several in and around the city where Israel has ordered civilians to leave. “They strike indiscriminately.”
Residents said troops had advanced following heavy airstrikes to Bani Suheila, a town just outside Khan Younis. Halima Abdel-Rahman, who fled to the town earlier in the war from her home in Beit Lahiya in the north, said they could hear explosions through the night.
“They are very close,” she said. “It’s the same scenario we saw in the north.”
Satellite photos from Sunday showed around 150 Israeli tanks, armored…
