CAIRO: Israeli forces on Wednesday issued fresh evacuation orders for Palestinians in areas of northern Gaza that were among the first to be hit at the start of the war with Hamas in October, after the militants launched a fresh barrage of rockets into Israel.
Army spokesman Avichay Adraee issued evacuation orders for several districts of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, two now largely destroyed towns that Israeli tanks pounded at the start of Israel's ground invasion.
“Hamas and terrorist organizations are launching rockets from your area toward the State of Israel. The IDF will act forcefully and immediately against them,” Adraee said in a message sent via SMS and social media to Palestinian residents.
“For your safety, please evacuate immediately to known shelters in central Gaza City,” the army spokesman said.
In a neighborhood near Gaza City, Al-Tuffah, an Israeli air strike 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 one strike killed three people on a motorcycle west of Khan Younis, while seven others were killed in a tank bombardment that hit a tent camp in the town of Abassan, east of the city.
MULTIPLE FACES
Fighting continues in the Gaza Strip as Israel braces for an expected assault in the north by Iran and its close Lebanese ally Hezbollah, following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 in the Iranian capital Tehran.
The Israeli military says it has killed dozens of Gaza militants in recent days and said on Wednesday that troops struck weapons manufacturing facilities in the crowded Deir Al-Balah neighborhood in the central Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the fighting have taken refuge.
Elsewhere in the heart of the city, 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 operational positions and weapons caches; Hamas denies this.
The militants say they continue to ambush Israeli troops and armored vehicles with explosive devices and are still capable of launching limited salvos 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 last week Hamas fired rockets from launchers near two international distribution and humanitarian aid warehouses, including the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA. Israeli forces targeted those sites, it added.
On October 7, Hamas-led militants unleashed the Gaza War with a cross-border offensive into Israeli communities, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts.
In response, Israel launched a relentless assault on Gaza, reducing much of the densely populated coastal strip to ruins, killing more than 39,600 Palestinians and wounding over 91,500, according to Gaza's Health Ministry figures.
The Hamas-led ministry makes no distinction between combatants and civilians in its death lists.
