CAIRO: Israeli forces on Wednesday issued new evacuation orders to Palestinians in areas of north Gaza that were among the first to be hit at the start of the conflict with Hamas in October, after fighters fired a fresh volley of rockets into Israel.

Army spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted the evacuation orders for several districts in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, two now largely destroyed towns into which Israeli tanks swept at the outset of Israel’s ground invasion.

“For your own safety, evacuate immediately to the known shelters in the centre of Gaza City,” the army spokesman said.

In a nearby Gaza City neighbourhood, 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 Yunis in southern Gaza. Medics said one strike killed three people on a motorcycle west of Khan Yunis, while seven others were killed in tank shelling that hit a tent encampment in Abassan town, east of the city.

‘Multiple fronts’

Fighting has continued in the Gaza Strip even as Israel braces for an expected assault in its north from Iran and its close Lebanese ally Hezbollah after the July 31 assassination in the Iranian capital Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The Israeli military says it has killed dozens of Gaza fighters in recent days and on Wednesday claimed troops had hit “weapons-making facilities” in the teeming district of Deir al Balah in central Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the fighting have taken shelter.

In other central areas, Israeli tanks shelled Nuseirat and Bureij, two of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps. Palestinian groups say they continue to carry out ambush attacks on Israeli troops and armoured vehicles with explosive devices, and are still able to launch limited rocket salvoes into Israel.

On Tuesday, Islamic Jihad, a close Hamas ally, said it fired rockets into Israel in response to Israeli massacres of civilians.

The Israeli military said that over the past week Hamas had fired rockets from launchers embedded near two international humanitarian aid and distribution warehouses, including the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. Israeli forces struck those sites, it added.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2024