Strike kills family as Israeli evacuation order sparks panicked flight from southern Gaza city

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike killed a prominent Palestinian doctor and eight members of his extended family on Tuesday after they complied with military orders to evacuate their home and moved into an Israeli-designated safe zone.

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 in 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.”

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 Hassan 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.

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 militants 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 militants it said had regrouped — a sign of Hamas’ continued capabilities even after nearly nine months of war in Gaza.

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 militants 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.

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip flee from parts of Khan Younis following an evacuation order by the Israeli army to leave the eastern part of Gaza Strip's second largest city on Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip flee from parts of Khan Younis following an evacuation order by the Israeli army to leave the eastern part of Gaza Strip's second largest city on Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip flee from parts of Khan Younis following an evacuation order by the Israeli army to leave the eastern part of Gaza Strip's second largest city on Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip flee from parts of Khan Younis following an evacuation order by the Israeli army to leave the eastern part of Gaza Strip's second largest city on Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip flee from parts of Khan Younis following an evacuation order by the Israeli army to leave the eastern part of Gaza Strip's second largest city on Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip flee from parts of Khan Younis following an evacuation order by the Israeli army to leave the eastern part of Gaza Strip's second largest city on Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Family killed as Israel evacuation order triggers panicked flight from Gaza's second largest city

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip flee from parts of Khan Younis following an evacuation order by the Israeli army to leave the eastern part of Gaza Strip's second largest city on Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)

Family killed as Israel evacuation order triggers panicked flight from Gaza's second largest city

MILWAUKEE (AP) — The Republican National Committee’s platform committee has adopted a policy document that reflects former President Donald Trump’s position opposing a federal abortion ban and ceding limits to states, omitting the explicit basis for a national ban for the first time in 40 years.

The committee adopted a draft platform Monday asserting, “We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or liberty without due process.” The document, obtained by The Associated Press, also noted "that the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights.”

The document sticks to the party's longstanding principle that the Constitution extends rights to the unborn, but removes language maintaining support for an “amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth,” a passage in the party platform first included in 1984.

The move comes as Trump imposes his priorities on the committee as he seeks to steer clear of strict abortion language, even while taking credit for setting up the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Trump appointed three of the six justices who voted in the majority to overturn the 1973 abortion rights precedent.

The abortion language was first reported by The New York Times.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, SBA Pro-Life America president, praised the committee for reaffirming “its commitment to protect unborn life through the 14th Amendment.”

Dannenfelser stopped short of endorsing the document's reflection of Trump's view that the matter rests entirely with states. Under the 14th Amendment, “it is Congress that enacts and enforces its provisions.”

The platform is a statement of first principles traditionally written by party activists. Trump's campaign wants the group drafting this year's platform to produce a shorter document that excludes statements favored by many conservatives but are potentially unpopular with the broader electorate.

The platform committee began its meeting Monday, a week before the start of the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin where Trump is scheduled to accept his third straight nomination for president.

Trump has faced months of Democratic criticism over abortion as President Joe Biden's reelection campaign has highlighted that Trump nominated half of the Supreme Court majority that struck down the nationwide right to abortion in 2022.

In promoting the platform document, the campaign released a statement highlighting 20 issues it addresses, including immigration, the economy, energy, taxes and crime, but omitted any mention of abortion.

Among the vocal abortion opponents on the platform committee, some say the aspiration of a federal ban on abortion after a certain stage in pregnancy must remain a party principle, even if it's not an immediately attainable policy or one that necessarily helps the Trump campaign in November.

“I see that as problematic. We still need these principles clearly stated. Some of these battles are not over,” said Iowa state Rep. Brad Sherman, a platform committee member who supported Trump’s winning Iowa caucus campaign in January and also supports a federal limit on abortion.

While the abortion statement is likely to be the most contested provision in the platform, there may also be disputes over Trump’s preference for tariffs and his isolationist approach to foreign policy and U.S. involvement in global conflicts, particularly in helping Ukraine as it battles Russia.

Conservative activists who are accustomed to having a seat at the table fumed over what they said was a secretive process for selecting committee members and the meeting taking place behind closed doors.

“For 40 years, the Republican Party and the GOP platform have massively benefitted from an open and transparent process,” said Tim Chapman, the incoming president of Advancing American Freedom, a foundation headed by Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump’s campaign has sought to reshape the Republican National Committee into a campaign vessel. It signaled in a memo last month from senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles that “textbook-long platforms ... are scrutinized and intentionally misrepresented by our political opponents.”

Trump ally Russ Vought is serving as the policy director of the Republican Party’s platform writing committee while also leading the effort to draft the 180-day agenda for Project 2025, a sweeping proposal for remaking government that Trump said Friday he knew “nothing about” despite having several former aides involved.

Trump had supported federal legislation in 2018 that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, though the measure fell short of the necessary support in the Senate.

However, after the 2022 midterm elections, Trump blamed Republicans who held strict anti-abortion positions for the party's failure to secure a larger House majority. He has since been critical of the most stringent abortion bans in individual states.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2023 found that about two-thirds of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The poll also found that 6 in 10 Americans think Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

Biden's campaign has criticized Republicans for making the platform committee meetings in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, closed to the news media and reminded voters of Trump's onetime support for a 20-week abortion ban.

Tamara Scott, who is one of Iowa's two Republican National Committee members and also a platform committee member, said Trump could campaign on the position he holds and also embrace the platform to reflect a longer-term goal of a federal limit.

“It’s our vision. It’s our foundational principles. It’s who we are as a party,” Scott said. “I agree a platform must be clear and concise but it must convey our core principles.”

To several on the committee, that means maintaining support for an “amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth,” the passage first included in 1984.

Trump was urged to keep that language in the platform, according to a letter signed by leaders of groups opposed to abortion, including Dannenfelser, Ralph Reed, Faith and Freedom Coalition founder and chairman; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

That passage, once removed, would be difficult to restore in future platforms, Dannenfelser said.

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed from Washington.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a presidential debate hosted by CNN with President Joe Biden, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)