By WAFAA SHURAFA, SAMY MAGDY and LEE KEATH

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Hamdan family — around a dozen people from three generations — fled their home in the middle of the night after the Israeli military ordered an evacuation from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

They found refuge with extended relatives in a building further north, inside an Israeli-declared safe zone. But hours after they arrived, an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday afternoon hit their building in the town of Deir al-Balah, killing nine members of the family and three others.

In all, five children and three women were among the dead, according to hospital records and a relative who survived.

Israel’s order on Monday for people to leave the eastern half of Khan Younis — the territory’s second-largest city — has triggered the third mass flight of Palestinians in as many months, throwing the population deeper into confusion, chaos and misery as they scramble once again to find safety.

About 250,000 people live in the area covered by the order, according to the United Nations. Many of them had just returned to their homes there after fleeing Israel’s invasion of Khan Younis earlier this year — or had just taken refuge there after escaping Israel’s offensive in the city of Rafah, further south.

The order also prompted a frantic flight from European General Hospital, Gaza’s second-largest hospital, located in the evacuation area. The facility shut down after staffers and more than 200 patients were evacuated overnight and on Tuesday, along with thousands of displaced who had sheltered on the hospital grounds, according to the staff and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had a medical team there.

Hisham Mhanna, the ICRC spokesperson in Gaza, said some families dragged patients in their hospital beds through the streets for up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) to reach safety. Ambulances moved others elsewhere as staff rushed out valuable equipment, including X-ray and ultrasound machines and endoscopy devices now so scarce, said a nurse, Muhammad Younis.

Hours after ordering the evacuation, the Israeli military said the hospital was not included on that order. But the staff said they feared a repeat of previous Israeli raids on other Gaza hospitals.

“Many hospitals have come to rubble and have been turned into battlefields or graveyards,” Mhanna said.

Israel has raided hospitals, saying Hamas uses them for military purposes, a claim Gaza’s medical officials deny.

On Tuesday, cars loaded with personal belongings streamed out of eastern Khan Younis, though the number of those fleeing was not immediately known. The new exodus comes on top of the 1 million people who fled Rafah since May, as well as tens of thousands who were displaced the past week from a new Israeli offensive in the Shijaiyah district of northern Gaza.

“We left everything behind,” said Munir Hamza, a father of three children who on Monday night fled his home in an eastern district of Khan Younis for the second time. “We are tired of moving and displacement. … This is unbearable.”

Nowhere safe

Up to 15 members of the Hamdan family fled their Khan Younis home and arrived late on Monday at their extended family’s building in Deir al-Balah, said Asmaa Salim, a relative who lived in the building.

The building was located inside the extended humanitarian zone that the Israeli military had declared when it began its offensive in Rafah in May, telling Palestinians to evacuate there for safety.

The strike came around 3 p.m. on Tuesday. Associated Press video shows an entire floor of the building gutted. “Almost everyone inside was martyred, only two or three survived,” Salim told the AP.

A list of the dead posted at the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said those killed included the family patriarch, 62-year-old dermatologist Hossam Hamdan, as well as his wife and their adult son and daughter. Four of their grandchildren, aged 3 to 5, and the mother of two of the children were also killed. A man and his 5-year-old son who lived in the building and a man on the street outside were also killed in the strike, which wounded 10 other people, including several children.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the strike.

Flight from Khan Younis

Monday’s evacuation order suggested a new ground assault into Khan Younis could be coming though there was no immediate sign of one. Israeli forces waged a months-long offensive there earlier this year, battling Hamas fighters and leaving large swaths of the southern city destroyed or heavily damaged.

Israel has repeatedly moved back into parts of the Gaza Strip it previously invaded to root out fighters it said had regrouped — a sign of Hamas’ continued capabilities even after nearly nine-months of war in Gaza. Hamas has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S., Canada, and European Union.

Israel’s campaign has killed more than 37,900 Palestinians, the majority women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish combatants among its count. Israel launched its campaign after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and took around 250 others hostage.

The Israeli military said Tuesday it estimates that some 1.8 million Palestinians are now in the humanitarian zone it declared, covering a stretch of about 14 kilometers (8.6 miles) along Gaza’s Mediterranean coast. Much of that area is now blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities with limited access to aid, U.N. and humanitarian groups say. Families live amid mountains of trash and streams of water contaminated by sewage.

The amount of food and other supplies getting into Gaza has plunged since the Rafah offensive began. The U.N. says fighting, Israeli military restrictions and general chaos — including looting of trucks by criminal gangs in Gaza — make it near impossible for it to pick up truckloads of goods that Israel has let in. As a result, cargo is stacked up uncollected just inside Gaza at the main Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, near Rafah.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said last week that it surveyed nearly 1,100 families who fled Rafah and 83% of them reported having no access to food and more than half had no access to safe water.

On Tuesday, more families fleeing Khan Younis were trying to find space in the zone. Um Abdel-Rahman said she and her family of four children — the youngest 3 years old — walked for hours during the night to reach the zone only to find no place to stay.

“There is no room for anyone,” she said. “We are waiting and have nothing to do but wait.”

Noha al-Bana said she has been displaced four times since fleeing Gaza City in the north early in the war.

“We have been humiliated,” she said. “No proper food, no proper water, no proper bathrooms, no proper place for sleep. … Fear, fear, fear. There is no safety. No safety at home, no safety in the tents.”

___

Magdy and Keath reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

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A pair of Ramsey County officials have taken new jobs recently as assistant city managers in Bloomington.

Kathy Hedin, who has served as the deputy county manager for health and wellness since 2020, will become the suburb’s assistant city manager for external services on July 22.

Kathy Hedin (Courtesy of Ramsey County)

Elizabeth Tolzmann was chief of staff under former county manager Ryan O’Connor, who took a new job with the Metropolitan Council in February. Tolzmann was hired in May as Bloomington’s assistant city manager for internal services.

Hedin has more than 20 years of experience working in local government, and Bloomington City Manager Jamie Verbrugge said in a news release that her “expertise and vision will be invaluable” in her new role.

“Kathy distinguished herself by her commitment to building trusting relationships, thoughtful and collaborative leadership style, determination, and her great kindness and empathy,” Verbrugge said.

Tolzmann previously served as assistant city manager for Bloomington between 2015 and 2017, and is an adjunct professor of law at University of St. Thomas Law School.

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“The reality is that we have a housing crisis, but the South Bronx cannot bear the burden of affordable housing on its own,” said Councilmember Rafael Salamanca, whose district produced the greatest number of affordable units last year and over the past decade. “We need all 51 council districts to do their fair share.”

Chris Janaro

City data compiled by the New York Housing Conference shows how many affordable units were built in each City Council district from 2014-2023.

While New York City contends with a lack of available housing and record-high homelessness, a new report highlights which neighborhoods are bearing the brunt of affordable residential construction, and which are lagging behind.

The latest NYC Housing Tracker Report, released Thursday by the New York Housing Conference (NYHC), reveals the total number of affordable units created in each City Council district since 2014. As found in previous analyses, production was concentrated in just a handful of the city’s 51 districts, many of which were already high-density neighborhoods with higher populations of people of color.

According to the report, 70 percent of residents in the 10 districts producing the most affordable housing are Black or Latinx, compared to 30 percent of residents in the 10 districts that produced the fewest new units. 

“The overall data is the same story that we reported on last time,” Rachel Fee, executive director at NYHC told City Limits. “We have communities of color in neighborhoods where land costs are lower, producing the bulk of the affordable housing, and then we have low-density communities that are really opting out from being part of the solution and producing no affordable housing or very little.”

One glaring example is Bronx Council District 17, which saw the greatest number of new affordable housing units built last year—1,266 apartments, or 8.9 percent of the city’s 14,277 unit total—matching the output of the bottom 28 districts combined.

Although the city’s housing production in 2023 was the highest in decades, it falls short of addressing the 1.4 percent housing vacancy rate revealed by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) in February—yet there is some cause for optimism for the future, housing advocates say. 

With the state’s passage of the Affordable Neighborhoods for New Yorkers (ANNY) incentive earlier this year—which replaces the expired 421-a tax benefit for developers who include affordable housing units in projects—paired with the potential approval of Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes for Housing Opportunity rezoning, development could not only increase, but also be more evenly distributed across the five boroughs.

“We’re not gonna see dramatic changes overnight. But I do think we have a real focus from our elected officials on providing solutions,” said Fee. Those changes, she added, are likely to allow more housing to be built in lower-density neighborhoods.

The new city budget, passed over the weekend, included a $2 billion boost in capital housing funds. And beginning next year, the city is expected to start work on a plan that will set housing production targets for each community district, the result of Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ Fair Housing Framework passed last year.

“I think the other really important thing to know is that in addition to the tax tools, the zoning changes, we have a City Council that is demanding greater investment in affordable housing,” Fee added.

Councilmember Susan Zhuang represents District 43, which encompasses the Bensonhurst neighborhood in Brooklyn. Newly elected in 2023, Zhuang’s district placed last in the city for affordable housing construction over the last decade, with only 27 affordable homes created, something she said she’s pushing to change, especially when it comes to affordable senior housing. 

“The first thing I [did] after I was elected into office, I contacted HPD, also the land use department of City Council, to try to find public space in my district able to build [on],” said Zhuang during a phone call following the report’s release. The will to build is there, but finding city-owned land available to develop has been challenging, she said. 

Brooklyn Community Board 11 in her district voted against the mayor’s City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which would relax zoning requirements to facilitate more residential development. The proposal includes the “Town Center Zoning” component, which would allow for the construction of apartments above commercial businesses.

“So we need to build taller, but at the same time, we need to have a balance,” said Zhuang, who believes there are likely some elements of the proposal that her constituents may like—just not all of them. “I have to represent my community. That’s my first priority.”

According to Councilmember Salamanca, the fear of constituent reprisal could be curtailed by the passage of City of Yes. He used former Bronx District 13 Councilmember Marjorie Velázquez as an example: after having a change of heart and endorsing a residential rezoning along Bruckner Boulevard last year, she failed to win reelection, partly due to public backlash.

“Her community was up in arms, and she lost the election because of it,” Salamanca told City Limits. If the City of Yes plan passes, he added, it would allow property owners more opportunities to build as-of-right, without having to seek the Council’s approval for a zoning change.  

“I think that what the mayor is doing here is kind of striking the right balance, changing the zoning laws, which will make it easier for a councilmember in a community board to negotiate a project because once it’s law, it’s no longer, ‘Oh, we don’t want this,’” he said. 

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Chris@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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