Israel orders Gazans to flee but residents say evacuation locations are coming under fire

Key PointsDozens of Palestinians have been killed following Israeli air strikes after a truce ended.Palestinian residents say areas they were told to move to are also coming under fire.Israel accuses Hamas of putting civilians in danger by operating from civilian areas.

Intense Israeli air strikes have hit the south of the Gaza Strip, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, including in areas where Israel had told people to seek shelter, residents and journalists on the ground say.

Israeli troops and tanks also

in the south of the enclave after having largely gained control of the now-devastated north.

Israel ordered Palestinians to leave parts of Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis.

But residents said that areas which they had been told to go to were also coming under fire.

Israel’s military posted a map on social media platform X with about a quarter of Khan Younis marked off in yellow as territory that must be evacuated at once.

Three arrows pointed south and west, telling people to head towards the Mediterranean coast and towards Rafah, a major town near the Egyptian border.

But the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza (UNRWA), Thomas White, said people in Rafah were themselves being forced to flee.

In the territory’s northern part, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said at least 50 people were killed in an Israeli air strike that hit two schools sheltering displaced people in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The Gaza health ministry could not be reached for comment on the report and it was not immediately possible to verify it independently.

A spokesperson for the Israeli army said it was looking into the report.

Bombing at one site in Rafah overnight had torn a crater the size of a basketball court out of the earth.

Israel

, including in tunnels which can only be destroyed by large bombs.

Hamas denies it does so.

As many as 80 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes in the Israeli bombing campaign that has reduced much of the crowded coastal strip to a desolate wasteland.

Israeli forces largely captured the northern half of Gaza in November, and

they have swiftly pushed deep into the southern half.

Tanks have driven into Gaza from the border fence and cut off the main north-south route, residents say.

Israel steps up military operations in Gaza after a sustained truce between Hamas and Israel did not hold further than a week despite diplomatic talks and captives released. Source: Getty, Supplied / Amir Levy

The Israeli military said the central road out of Khan Younis to the north “constitutes a battlefield” and was now shut.

Hamas said its fighters clashed with Israeli forces in northern Khan Younis overnight.

The commander of Israel’s armoured corps, Brigadier-General Hisham Ibrahim, told Army Radio the military had almost achieved its goals in northern Gaza.

“We are beginning to expand the ground manoeuvre to other parts of the Strip, with one goal – to topple the Hamas terrorist group,” he said.

Israel says its evacuation orders are aimed at protecting civilians from harm, and called on international organisations to help encourage Gazans to move to the areas labelled safe on Israeli maps.

The United Nations said the areas in the south that Israel has ordered evacuated in the three days since the truce ended had housed more than 350,000 people before the war – not counting the hundreds of thousands now sheltering there from other areas.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : SBS – https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/israel-orders-gazans-to-flee-but-residents-say-evacuation-locations-are-coming-under-fire/x9vwexpze