The five men, fear etched on their faces, lift their hands in the air as they try to walk down a desolate and relatively quiet street in southern Gaza. Plumes of dark smoke billow into the air close by.

A young man holds a makeshift white flag aloft. The small group is trying to reach family members trapped down the street, a middle-age man says on camera, gesturing with his hands. A gold wedding ring gleams on one of his fingers.

Moments later, shots rip through the buzzing sound of drones, and the men duck to take cover. But before they are able to get away, the man with the wedding ring collapses.

The incident, recorded in the Al Mawasi neighborhood in Khan Younis, which the Israeli military had designated a “safe zone,” unfolds in nine videos obtained and verified by NBC News. It raises more questions about Israeli forces’ treatment of civilians caught in the war, which has already killed 25,000 Palestinians, including 10,000 children.

 

After the gunfire subsides, locals flock to drag the body off the street. A woman screams. Prayers and sobs can be heard as a crowd gathers around the body, and one man furiously tries to revive the dead man.

Gunfire breaks out again, and the larger group takes shelter in the courtyard of a nearby university.

Ahmed Hijazi, a Palestinian videographer who witnessed the event and recorded the videos, told NBC News that the bullets came from one of several nearby Israeli tanks.

“The tanks directly fired” at the dead man, and “one of the bullets went straight into his heart. He was immediately killed,” said Hijazi, who ran back to the group after the shooting and continued recording.

NBC News cannot confirm Hijazi’s account of who opened fire, which aligns with a report on the same incident by the British news network ITV News, which showed different angles. In a separate video, verified by NBC News and recorded from a building in Al Aqsa University, Israeli tanks are seen lining the road.

The Israeli military said this week that it had encircled the area, with its troops deepening their ground offensive “to the west” of Khan Younis.

Further videos of the scene show Hijazi and other displaced Palestinians running to retrieve the mortally wounded man, who is bleeding from his chest.

NBC News provided the Israel Defense Forces with a raw, single-take video of the shooting, its precise location and the time it occurred and asked whether Israeli forces had fired at the men. A spokesperson said that the IDF was “not aware of this incident” and that “the video is clearly edited, and we have no way to comment.” The spokesperson declined to say whether IDF soldiers were in the area Monday.

Hamas officials did not immediately respond to requests for information and comment on the incident.

Before the incident, the group of men had hoped to reunite with the 50 or so family members they had been split up from, according to the men’s comments on camera and the eyewitness interview conducted by NBC News. According to the man with the wedding band, his brother and his brother’s children were surrounded by Israeli tanks, and the men were returning east in hope of retrieving them.

“They didn’t bring my brother. We want to go get him out, God willing,” the man says in the video minutes before he is killed.

In the third of the videos, recorded just after 3 p.m. Monday, the five men begin to walk along the road toward the smoke. One of them holds a green ID card in addition to the white flag when at least three gunshots are fired, killing the older man.

“We carried him and took him to his wife and his daughter, his family members who were waiting for him,” Hijazi said, referring to people in the crowd. “There was a doctor there, and he performed artificial breathing and pressure so he could see if he still breathed.”

Hijazi identified the man as a known apparel merchant in the community who was a member of the Abou Sahloul family. ITV named him as Ramzi. Hijazi described the moment as among the worst things he has witnessed in the war, which are “hard to forget and comprehend.”

The incident took place just outside the walls of Al-Aqsa University on Al-Bahr Street, a few minutes’ walk from Al-Khair Hospital, according to geolocation analysis by NBC News and metadata provided by Hijazi — further information, such as the location, date and time it was shot, that is embedded within the video.

Tents and temporary shelters line the road, formerly occupied by some of the hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians who have been chasing relative safety in the southern city of Rafah.

Under the laws of war, also called International Humanitarian Law, parties to an armed conflict must take all feasible measures to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and they may target only combatants. Though civilians have no obligation to do it, waving a white flag is a universally recognized symbol as a further attempt to show that one is unarmed and means no harm.

U.S. officials have seen the video, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said Wednesday, but he declined to comment on the specifics.

Asked whether the U.S. would support an Israeli investigation, Patel said, “That is for the IDF to undertake and determine, based on the circumstances of that situation.”

“We have been clear to our Israeli partners that they need to take every possible measure to avoid civilian harm during an operation and investigate credible allegations of law or war violations when they arise,” he said.

Medical facilities battered amid Israeli assault in Khan Younis, say Palestinian officials in Gaza, as death toll rises.

Medical facilities in Khan Younis in southern Gaza have been battered amid an Israeli assault in the area Monday, Palestinian health officials said, as the number of people killed in Israel’s siege on Gaza continues to rise.

Dozens of people have been killed and wounded in the latest offensive in western Khan Younis, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza. Medical facilities including the Nasser Medical Complex, Al Amal Hospital and the Palestine Red Crescent Society headquarters are located in the area.

“The situation here is completely catastrophic. We didn’t sleep last night. The hospital is entirely besieged,” Ahmad Al Moghrabi, a doctor at the Nasser Medical Complex said in a video shared to his Instagram page Monday.

“There is no way for us to escape the hospital and no way for evacuation. The troops are all around, and the only roads for evacuation are filled with dead bodies,” he said.

The Nasser Medical Complex is receiving more serious injuries than it can accommodate, the health ministry said, adding that intensive care units are at capacity.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff at the Nasser hospital said “there is a sense of panic among staff, patients and displaced people sheltering inside the building,” as they could feel the ground shaking during the strikes, MSF said on social media.

The hospital wards are full and exit routes are blocked, preventing the evacuation of medical staff and patients from the hospital, MSF added.

Health officials also said that Israeli forces Monday stormed the Al Khair Hospital, west of Khan Younis, and detained a number of its medical staff, amid an ongoing “siege” of the area.

The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas outposts, infrastructure, and command and control centers in Khan Younis and the action demanded “precise operations” due to the densely populated civilian areas.

The military operation, which was launched on Sunday, is being led by Israel’s 98th Paratroopers Division and is expected to last for several days, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, without providing further details on the timeline.

“Dismantling Hamas’ military framework in western Khan Younis is the heart of the logic behind the operation,” the statement added.

The IDF said it had seen militants at “sensitive sites” such as hospitals and shelters in the tightly packed civilian areas.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its headquarters and the Al-Amal Hospital, located in the same neighborhood, are “under siege” by Israeli forces, and soldiers are “targeting anyone who tries to move in the area.”

A field ambulance point has been established outside the Al-Amal neighborhood, where the medical facilities are located, to ensure a continuity of operations.

But the organization said the situation remains “extremely dangerous” and around 80 percent of the entrances and exits to Al-Amal are obstructed. Ambulance teams are facing “significant difficulties in reaching the wounded and injured due to the continuous bombardment in the governorate.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he is “deeply concerned” by reports of the fighting, warning that that violence near Al-Amal hospital and the raid on Al-Khair not only “put patients and people seeking safety within these facilities at risk, but they also prevent newly injured people outside the hospitals from being reached and receiving care.”

Israel’s siege in Gaza has devastated swathes of the territory, diminished food, fuel and water supplies, and crushed the enclave’s medical system. Over 1.9 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, many multiple times, according to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

There are 16 out of 36 hospitals partially functioning across the strip, including nine in southern Gaza and seven in the north, the UN’s humanitarian affairs office reported on Sunday.

In southern Gaza, three hospitals – Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir El-Balah, and Nasser and Gaza European hospitals in Khan Younis – are “at risk of closure due to the issuance of evacuation orders in adjacent areas and the ongoing conduct of hostilities nearby,” OCHA said.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza has been functioning to a “limited degree” since mid-January, added OCHA.

The Health Ministry said Monday that the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7 rose to 25,295, with at least 63,000 injuries recorded. At least 190 people were killed and 340 injured in the last 24 hours, the Ministry statement said.

CNN cannot independently verify casualty figures in Gaza due to limited access to the area.

Hamas’s militant wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said in a statement Monday that they were fighting in the western Khan Younis area, killing a number of Israeli soldiers with anti-personnel missiles.

Ahmed Naseem, a resident of Al-Amal neighborhood in Khan Younis, told CNN Monday that “intense” shelling of the area started in the early hours of Monday.

“There was heavy shelling in the area since the early hours of Monday. I could feel it intensely from the building I live in,” Nassem said. “We don’t even dare open the windows to see where these attacks are happening,” he said.

He said that he is “terrified of filming the scenes taking place nearby” because he fears he will be shot at, if a drone catches him in the act.

“We can’t even go to the rooftop because we cannot determine if drones will fire at us,” he said. “A few days ago water tanks were damaged, after drones fired right at them. My cousin, who was filling water at the time of the strike, was close to getting hit, but survived,” he added.

Khan Younis: UN says nine killed at Gaza shelter as fighting rages.

At least nine people were killed and 75 injured when a UN facility sheltering civilians was struck in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the UN's Palestinian refugee agency says.

UNRWA said two tank shells hit its Khan Younis Training Centre during fighting in the city's western outskirts.

Its commissioner condemned the "blatant disregard of basic rules of war".

Israel's military said it had ruled out that the incident was the result of an air or artillery strike by its forces.

It added that it was reviewing Israeli operations nearby and examining the possibility that it was "Hamas fire".

Israeli troops have been battling Hamas fighters as they advance into western Khan Younis, a day after the military said it had completely encircled the city.

Clashes and bombardment around the city's two main hospitals have also left thousands of patients, staff and others unable to leave.

The conflict was triggered by an unprecedented cross-border attack by Hamas gunmen on southern Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,300 people were killed and about 250 others taken hostage.

More than 25,700 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

An estimated 1.7 million people - nearly three-quarters of the population - have also been displaced by the past 12 weeks of fighting and many of them are sheltering inside UN facilities or near them.

The Khan Younis Training Centre is one of the largest UNRWA shelters, with between 30,000 and 40,000 people said to be living inside its grounds.

UNRWA says the compound is clearly marked, that its co-ordinates have been shared with Israeli authorities, and that it and the civilians inside must be protected under international law.

However, at least six displaced people were killed and many more injured when the training centre was struck on Monday during intense fighting in the surrounding area, according to the agency.

UNRWA's Gaza director, Thomas White, told the BBC from the nearby town of Rafah that on Wednesday afternoon a building housing 800 people who had fled northern Gaza was hit by two tank rounds.

"We've got a team on the ground there now with the shelter management team. At this stage, it looks like there are nine fatalities and over 75 people injured," he said.

"Of course, the challenge now is to try to get medical care for those people in a situation where effectively the major hospitals in Gaza are operating at very limited capacity."

Mr White said UNRWA officials had been in constant contact with Israeli officers and that they had been given assurances that such facilities were safe.

"So, despite all of that co-ordination, the reality is that the Israeli army has not been meeting its obligations to protect civilians, to show due precaution when operating in areas where there are civilians."

In response to UNRWA's reports, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: "After an examination of our operational systems, the IDF has currently ruled out that this incident is a result of an aerial or artillery strike by the IDF."

"A thorough review of the operations of the forces in the vicinity is under way," it added. "The IDF is also examining the possibility that the strike was a result of Hamas fire."

Vedant Patel of the US state department repeated Washington's calls for the protection of civilians in Gaza.

"We deplore today's attack on the UN's Khan Younis training centre," she said, and called it "incredibly concerning".

Earlier, the IDF said its troops had "launched a divisional manoeuvre on West Khan Younis" that was targeting Hamas "outposts, infrastructure, and command and control centres".

"Dismantling Hamas' military framework in western Khan Yunis is the heart of the logic behind the operation," it added.

The IDF also said that Hamas "exploits the civilian population, exploits shelters and hospitals" - something the group has denied.

Gaza's health ministry meanwhile accused the IDF of "isolating hospitals in Khan Younis and carrying out massacres in the western area of the city".

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said the al-Amal Hospital, which it runs, and its local headquarters were under "siege" by Israeli forces, trapping patients, wounded people and an estimated 13,000 displaced people.

The organisation alleged that three displaced people were killed after being targeted at the entrance to the headquarters on Wednesday morning.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned on Tuesday night that its staff inside the nearby Nasser Medical Complex - the largest hospital still partly functioning in Gaza - had reported bombing and heavy gunfire nearby.

"They are currently unable to evacuate along with the thousands of people in the hospital, including 850 patients, due to roads to and from the building being either inaccessible or too dangerous."

The IDF has issued evacuation orders for western parts of Khan Younis, including those where Nasser and al-Amal are located. The UN estimates there are about 88,000 residents and 425,000 displaced people in the area.

Mr White told the BBC that tens of thousands more people were now on the move, heading south to Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where as many as 1.4 million are already sheltering.

In another incident in Khan Younis on Tuesday, a cameraman for the UK's ITV News filmed a Palestinian civilian being shot dead on a main road about 1.7km (1 mile) south of the UNRWA shelter.

Five men are seen walking towards the combat zone holding a white flag, before there is a burst of gunfire and one of them falls to the ground. It was not clear who opened fire.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was asked in the Parliament on Wednesday whether such pictures would prompt him to push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

He replied: "No-one wants to see this conflict go on for a moment longer than is necessary and we do want to see an immediate and sustained humanitarian pause."

Efforts involving several countries to try to reach a ceasefire are ongoing, with one plan said to include a month-long truce and phased release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

But both Israel and Hamas appear to have rejected proposals, and hopes of any progress have been dampened.

Egypt's President, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, meanwhile accused Israel of deliberately holding up aid deliveries at the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing as "a form of pressure on the Gaza Strip and its people over the conflict and the release of hostages".

However, an Israeli defence ministry agency co-ordinating the deliveries with Egypt and the UN rejected the claim, insisting that "there is no limit to the amount of aid that can enter Gaza".

Israeli army says operations in Khan Younis are expanding.

A woman holds a toddler as Palestinian families flee the city of Khan Yunis on the coastal road leading to Rafah amid the ongoing Israeli bombardment.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday it was intensifying its campaign in Khan Younis, the main city in southern Gaza where Israeli officials believe Hamas' military leaders have their stronghold.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that troops have "carried out an extensive operation during which they encircled Khan Younis and deepened the operation in the area."

The IDF said "dozens of terrorists" have been killed in the past 24 hours in Khan Younis and that "ground troops engaged in close-quarters combat" with militants.

Israel believes senior Hamas officials are hiding in tunnels in Khan Younis and that militants are keeping Israeli hostages in the extensive underground network, too.

The army announced an expansion of its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. In December the IDF said that its troops had begun to encircle Khan Younis.

Israeli military operations have been steadily ramping up in the city, with IDF ground troops engaged in hand-to-hand fighting amid frequent airstrikes from above.