Cairo. Israel on Saturday ordered Palestinians in more areas of the southern Gaza city of Rafah to evacuate and head to what it calls an expanded humanitarian zone in Al-Mawasi, in a new sign that the army is moving forward. with its ground attack plans against Rafah.
In a post on the social network from Gaza.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 37 Palestinians, 24 of them from central areas of Gaza, were killed in airstrikes overnight across the enclave, including Rafah.
“They dropped leaflets in Rafah and said: Rafah to al-Zawayda is safe, people must evacuate there, and they did, and what happened to them? Dismembered corpses? There is no safe place in Gaza,” he told Reuters Khitam Al-Khatib, who said he lost at least 10 of his relatives in an airstrike on a family home early on Saturday.
Al-Zawayda is a small town in the center of the Gaza Strip that has been overwhelmed by thousands of displaced people from across the enclave.
The Israeli military said its aircraft had struck dozens of targets across the strip over the past day, adding that its ground troops had eliminated fighters in Zeitoun in recent hours.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least seven people in a house in the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, all from the same family, according to doctors.
In Rafah, residents told Reuters that the Israeli army’s new evacuation orders covered areas of the city center and left little doubt that Israel planned to expand its ground offensive there.
“The situation is very difficult, people are leaving their homes in panic,” said Khaled, 35, a resident of the Shaboura neighborhood, an area where the new evacuation orders have been issued.
The Israeli army said it was continuing its operational activity against Hamas fighters in eastern Rafah and on the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing.
Despite strong pressure from the United States and alarm expressed by residents and humanitarian groups, Israel has said it will press ahead with the raid on Rafah, where more than a million displaced people have sought refuge during the 7-month war.
Israeli tanks took over the main road dividing eastern and western Rafah on Friday, effectively surrounding the eastern part in an assault that has caused Washington to delay the delivery of some military aid to its ally.
Israel claims it cannot win the war without eradicating the thousands of Hamas fighters it believes are deployed in Rafah.
Some 300,000 Gazans have so far moved towards Al-Mawasi, according to Israeli military estimates published on Saturday.
The war was sparked by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage, according to Israeli counts.
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– 2024-05-14 01:14:29
