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.
