The Israeli army on Friday called on residents of several neighborhoods in northern Gaza to flee, in preparation for a new military operation following repeated rocket attacks.
According to an appeal in Arabic by an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, people should move to shelters west of Gaza city.
As gunfire continues from the area, the Israeli army plans action against the Palestinian Islamist Hamas and other terrorist organizations there.
Aid agencies are increasingly critical of the Israeli army’s repeated calls for civilians in the Gaza Strip to flee.
“The constant evacuation orders are exhausting families in Gaza and severely hampering the delivery of life-saving aid,” said Martin Frick, head of the Berlin office of the UN World Food Programme. “Almost everyone in Gaza has been displaced by the successive evacuation orders since October 2023.”
All in all, about 86 percent of the besieged coastline is an evacuation zone, he said. In August alone, there were numerous calls to flee, affecting a quarter of a million people. “Some families are fleeing for the tenth time.”
People are hungry and disease is spreading in the few places where people are seeking shelter, he said. The areas are also massively overcrowded, the agency said. “This daily horror has become an alarming normality,” Frick said.
The IDF said two projectiles were fired from the northern Gaza Strip toward the Israeli border town of Sderot in the early evening. One was intercepted, while the other landed in an open area. Reports of injuries were not initially available.
Dozens of militants killed in fighting in Gaza Strip
Dozens of militants have been killed by Israeli forces during fighting in the Gaza Strip since Thursday, the Israeli military said on Friday.
The army destroyed what it said was terrorist infrastructure during fighting in the town of Khan Younis in the south of the coastal region and in the Deir al-Balah area further north.
The Israeli Air Force also fired on positions from which rockets were fired into Israel.
According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, several civilians have been killed by Israeli attacks.
In northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon, there were renewed gun battles between the army and the Islamist Hezbollah militia.
None of the information could be independently verified.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, has displaced approximately 90% of Gaza’s population.
About 2.2 million people live in the coastal strip, many of whom have been displaced multiple times, according to the UN.
Ceasefire efforts will continue
Meanwhile, ceasefire mediation efforts continue in Cairo. According to media reports, the main bone of contention is Hamas’ demand for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects this.
UN representatives have called for a ceasefire so that health workers can at least vaccinate the hundreds of thousands of children in the war zone against polio.
The charity Save the Children warned on Thursday that if the polio outbreak in Gaza is not tackled it will undermine global efforts to eradicate the disease.
