CAIRO: Israeli forces on Wednesday issued fresh evacuation orders to 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 militants fired a fresh volley of rockets into Israel.
Army spokesman Avichay Adraee published evacuation orders for several districts in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, two now largely destroyed towns where Israeli tanks swept in at the start of Israel's ground invasion.
“Hamas and terrorist organizations are firing rockets from your area at the State of Israel. The IDF will act forcefully and immediately against them,” Adraee said in the message sent via text and social media to Palestinian residents.
“For your own safety, evacuate immediately to the known shelters in the center of Gaza City,” the army spokesman said.
In a nearby Gaza City neighborhood, Al-Tuffah, an Israeli airstrike on a house killed three Palestinians, medics said.
Later on Wednesday, ten Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli attacks in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Doctors said an attack killed three people on a motorcycle west of Khan Younis, while seven others were killed in tank shelling that hit a tent camp in the town of Abassan, east of the city.
MULTIPLE FRONTS
Fighting has continued in the Gaza Strip even as Israel braces 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.
The Israeli military says it has killed dozens of militants in Gaza in recent days and on Wednesday said troops had struck weapons manufacturing facilities in the bustling Deir Al-Balah district in central Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the fighting have taken refuge.
In other central areas, Israeli tanks shelled Nuseirat and Bureij, two of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps. Israel says Hamas militants use civilian infrastructure for cover and to hide operational posts and weapons caches; Hamas denies this.
Militants say they continue to carry out ambushes against Israeli troops and armored vehicles with explosive devices, and are still able to fire limited volleys of rockets into Israel.
On Tuesday, Islamic Jihad, a close ally of Hamas, said it fired rockets at Israel in response to what it called Israeli “massacres of civilians.”
The Israeli military said Hamas had in the past week fired rockets from rockets embedded near two international warehouses for humanitarian aid and distribution, including the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. Israeli forces struck those locations, it added.
Hamas-led militants launched the Gaza war on October 7 with a cross-border rampage into Israeli communities, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli data.
In response, Israel has pursued a relentless assault on Gaza that has reduced much of the densely populated coastal strip to ruins, killed more than 39,600 Palestinians and injured more than 91,500, according to figures from Gaza's health ministry.
The Hamas-led ministry makes no distinction between combatants and civilians in its death lists.
