Israel extends evacuation orders as it shifts offensive to southern Gaza amid heavy bombardment

Many of the area’s 2.3 million residents are packed into the south after Israeli forces ordered civilians to leave the north in the early days of the two-month war.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: The Israeli army on Sunday ordered the evacuation of more areas in and around Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, as it shifted its offensive to the southern half of the territory, where the report said many Hamas leaders are based to hide. Heavy bombing was reported overnight through Sunday in the area of ​​Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, as well as in parts of the north that had been the focus of Israel’s blistering air and ground campaign.

Many of the area’s 2.3 million residents are packed into the south after Israeli forces ordered civilians to leave the north in the early days of the two-month war, sparked by an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and others militants, killing about 1,200 people. people, mainly civilians, in southern Israel. About 240 others were taken hostage.

With the resumption of fighting, hopes that a temporary ceasefire could be renegotiated disappeared. A weeklong ceasefire that expired on Friday had allowed the release of dozens of Israeli and foreign hostages held by Gaza and Palestinians jailed by Israel.

“We will continue the war until we achieve all its goals, and it is impossible to achieve those goals without the ground operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech on Saturday evening.

Since the ceasefire collapsed, Hamas has fired dozens of rockets into Israel, setting off air raid sirens in the southern and central areas. Most of the rockets are intercepted or fall in open areas, but the fire continues to disrupt life in large parts of Israel. Since October 7, more than 200,000 Israelis have been evacuated from their homes along the Gaza and Lebanon borders due to rocket fire.

On Sunday, the Israeli military expanded evacuation orders in and around Khan Younis, telling residents of at least five more areas and neighborhoods to leave for their safety. Since the resumption of fighting, several hundred thousand Palestinians have received evacuation orders, but there are few places they can reach.

Residents said the Israeli army dropped leaflets ordering them to move south to Rafah or a coastal area in the southwest. “The city of Khan Younis is a dangerous combat zone,” the leaflets read.

U.N. observers said in a report that before the latest evacuation orders were issued, those told to leave made up about a quarter of Gaza’s territory – home to nearly 800,000 people before the war.

Much of Gaza’s population now lives crammed into the southern half of the territory. The area itself, which borders Israel and Egypt to the south, has been sealed off, leaving residents with the only option to move within Gaza to avoid the bombings.

There are nearly 958,000 displaced people in 99 UN facilities in the southern Gaza Strip, including 34 in Khan Younis, according to Juliette Toma, director of communications at the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

The average number of displaced people in UN shelters is 9,500, more than four times the usual capacity, according to the agency’s November 30 report. The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has warned Israel to avoid significant new mass displacement.

The main hospital in Khan Younis received at least three deaths and dozens of injuries on Sunday morning as a result of an Israeli attack on a residential building in the eastern part of the city, an Associated Press journalist at the hospital said.

In addition, the bodies of 31 people killed in Israeli bombardments of the central parts of the Gaza Strip were taken to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza’s central city of Deir al-Balah, said Omar al-Darawi, an administrative officer there Hopital.

AP video showed bodies in white bags on the ground outside the hospital in Deri al-Balah as dozens of people held funeral prayers on Sunday morning. One woman cried as she cradled the body of a child in her lap as she sat in a chair. Another adult carried the body of a baby as he climbed into a truck to bury the remains.

The Israeli army said on Sunday that its fighter jets and helicopters “struck terror targets in the Gaza Strip, including terror tunnel shafts, command centers and weapons storage facilities,” while a drone killed five Hamas fighters.

In northern Gaza, rescue teams with little equipment sifted through the rubble of buildings in the Jabaliya refugee camp and other neighborhoods in Gaza City on Sunday, searching for potential survivors and dead bodies.

“They strike everywhere,” said Amal Radwan, a woman sheltering in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp. “Around us is the non-stop sound of explosions.”

Mohamed Abu Abed, who lives in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, also said there were brutal airstrikes and shelling in his neighborhood and surrounding areas.

“The situation here is unimaginable,” he said. “Death is everywhere. You can die in an instant.”

The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Saturday that the total death toll in the Gaza Strip since the war began on October 7 had surpassed 15,200, a sharp increase from the previous count of more than 13,300 on November 20. does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, but it does say that 70% of the dead were women and children. According to the report, more than 40,000 people have been injured since the war began.

The US call to protect civilians came after an offensive devastated large parts of northern Gaza in the first weeks of the war.

“Too many innocent Palestinians have been murdered. Frankly, the extent of civilian suffering and the images and videos from Gaza are devastating,” US Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters on Saturday at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai.

Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said Israel is making “maximum efforts” to protect civilians and that the military has used leaflets, phone calls and radio and TV broadcasts to urge Gazans to leave certain areas. He added that Israel is considering creating a security buffer zone that would not allow Gazans direct access on foot to the border fence.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the militants, accusing them of operating in residential areas. It claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence. Israel says at least 78 of its soldiers have been killed in the offensive in northern Gaza.

Bombings destroyed a block of about 50 residential buildings in Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighborhood and a six-story building in the Jabaliya urban refugee camp on the city’s northern edge on Saturday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

The Shijaiyah attacks killed more than 60 people and buried more than 300 under the rubble, the observers said, citing the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense, said rescuers lack bulldozers and other equipment to reach those buried under the rubble, confirming the Red Crescent’s estimate that around 300 people are missing. He said the block had housed more than 1,000 people.

Meanwhile, Harris told a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi that the US would “under no circumstances” allow the forcible relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, a continued siege of Gaza or the redrawing of its borders. according to an American summary.

The renewed hostilities have increased concerns over 137 hostages, who the Israeli military says are still being held after 105 were released during the recent ceasefire. Israel released 240 Palestinians during the ceasefire. Most of those released by both sides were women and children.

The fate of the hostages has attracted widespread attention and sympathy in Israel, and the release of some during the ceasefire put pressure on the government to negotiate additional releases. The resumption of fighting appears to have halted these efforts and raised fears that the remaining hostages could be in danger.

The hostages’ families have called for an urgent meeting with Israel’s security cabinet, saying time was “running out to rescue those still held by Hamas.”

A group formed by relatives of hostages said on Sunday that the prime minister and the security cabinet had a “moral and ethical obligation” to meet the relatives. “Members of the security cabinet must give families an answer to the question: how do they want to maintain the highest goal of the war: returning the hostages alive. Now,” they said.

(Magdy reported from Cairo and Becatoros from Athens. Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed to this report.)