Israeli planes have dropped leaflets, urging “everyone in Gaza City” to leave because the area “will be a dangerous combat zone.”
The Israeli occupation army instructed all remaining residents of Gaza City to flee south towards Deir al-Balah.
The call on Wednesday came as the Israeli military intensified attacks throughout the besieged Palestinian enclave, including a raid on a UN refugee agency compound that it claimed was being used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters.
The Israeli army has issued several evacuation warnings in Gaza City in the past few days, as Israeli troops carried out operations in its western, southern, and eastern neighborhoods, according to the Times of Israel.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the northern part of the enclave despite repeated Israeli efforts, since the start of the war, to empty northern Gaza from its inhabitants.
Israeli planes have dropped leaflets, urging “everyone in Gaza City” to leave because the area “will be a dangerous combat zone.”
The flyers outlined two “safe routes” for evacuation and instructions to head south.
Israel is calling on the people of northern Gaza to head south.
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‘Mass Suffering’
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) warned that the latest set of Israeli evacuation orders will exacerbate the already dire situation in Gaza, where most of the population has been displaced since the start of the war in October.
The directive “will only fuel mass suffering for Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced again and again,” the agency said. It warned that the repeated displacement of Palestinians makes the work of relief groups more difficult because they are forced to “reset their aid operations over and over again.”
“Aid workers are responding but what they can deliver falls far short of the needs,” UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory Muhannad Hadi wrote on X on Wednesday after a trip to Gaza.
During the early stages of the invasion of Gaza, Israel told Palestinians to evacuate from the northern part of the enclave. As the Israeli army expanded its raids, it instructed people to leave certain southern areas as well, including eastern Khan Younis and Rafah, a city near the Egyptian border that has become a giant refugee camp.
The Israeli army said it is continuing a “targeted, intelligence-based operational activity” in Rafah and elsewhere.
Addressing the Knesset on Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the Israeli army’s actions have “led to the elimination of over 14,000 terrorists and the collapse of the military frameworks of Hamas.”
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Genocide
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 38,295 Palestinians have been killed, and 88,241 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety.
(PC, RT)
