CAIRO: Israeli forces on Wednesday issued new evacuation orders for Palestinians in areas of northern Gaza, which were among the first to be hit at the start of the war with Hamas in October, after the militants fired a fresh volley of rockets into Israel.
Army spokesman Avichay Adraee posted evacuation orders for several districts in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, two now largely destroyed towns that Israeli tanks swept through at the start of Israel's ground invasion.
“Hamas and terrorist organizations are launching rockets from your area towards the State of Israel. The IDF will act forcefully and immediately against them,” Adraee said in the message sent via text message and social media to Palestinian residents.
“For your own safety, evacuate immediately to known shelters in central Gaza City,” the army spokesman said.
In a nearby Gaza City neighborhood of Al-Tuffah, an Israeli airstrike on a house killed three Palestinians, medics said.
Later on Wednesday, 10 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Medics said a strike killed three people on a motorcycle west of Khan Younis, while seven others were killed when a tank shelled a tent camp in the town of Abassan, east of the city.
MULTIPLE FRONTS
Fighting continued in the Gaza Strip even as Israel braced for an expected attack in its north from Iran and its close Lebanese ally Hezbollah, following the July 31 assassination in the Iranian capital of Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Israel's military says it has killed dozens of militants in the Gaza Strip in recent days and on Wednesday said troops struck weapons manufacturing facilities in the crowded Deir Al-Balah neighborhood in central Gaza, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken of fighting. shelter.
In other central areas, Israeli tanks shelled Nuseirat and Bureij, two of the eight historic refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. Israel says Hamas militants use civilian infrastructure for cover and to hide operations posts and weapons caches; Hamas denies this.
The militants say they continue to carry out ambushes on Israeli troops and armored vehicles with explosive devices and are still able to launch limited volleys of rockets into Israel.
On Tuesday, Islamic Jihad, a close ally of Hamas, said it had fired rockets into Israel in response to what it called Israeli “massacres of civilians.”
The Israeli military said that in the past week, Hamas fired rockets from embedded launchers near two depots for the distribution and international humanitarian aid, including the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. Israeli forces hit those places, he added.
Hamas-led militants sparked the Gaza war on October 7 with a cross-border attack on Israeli communities, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli accounts.
In response, Israel has pursued a relentless assault on Gaza that has reduced much of the heavily populated coastal strip to rubble, killed more than 39,600 Palestinians and injured more than 91,500, according to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.
The Hamas-run ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its death lists.
