On Saturday, the Israeli military ordered Palestinians to flee further areas of eastern Rafah and the northern Gaza Strip as it continued its fight against Hamas militants.
Residents in Rafah, the Palestinian territory’s southernmost city, reported receiving an evacuation order via text and voice messages on their phones. This comes after Israeli tanks and troops seized a major border crossing with Egypt.
Residents and displaced Gazans were instructed to evacuate areas of Rafah’s Shabura refugee camp, administrative area, Jenina, and Khirbet al-Adas neighborhoods and travel to the coastal “humanitarian area” in Al-Mawasi.
Aid groups and UN officials have cautioned that the area is already congested and unprepared for an influx of migrants.
Israeli military spokeswoman Avichay Adraee issued the order in Arabic on the social networking platform X, claiming that these regions have “witnessed Hamas terrorist activities in recent days and weeks”.
Images on social media revealed pamphlets with the most recent order, which the army said it had distributed in impacted districts.
Suhaib al-Hams, a hospital director in Rafah, told media via video message that “sadly, the Kuwait Speciality Hospital is now included in the places threatened with evacuation.”
“There is no other place for patients and injured people to go to but this hospital,” Hams said, urging “immediate international protection” for the medical facility.
On Monday, the Israeli army issued its first evacuation order for areas of eastern Rafah, claiming it was preparing for a widely anticipated ground attack.
Israeli leaders have frequently pledged to send ground soldiers into Rafah, where the majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have taken refuge, claiming that four Hamas battalions were in the southern city and needed to be decimated.
According to Adraee’s statement, evacuation orders were also given to Palestinians in northern Gaza’s Jabalia and Beit Lahia, which suffered heavy combat in the early stages of the seven-month conflict.
“You are in a dangerous combat zone,” Adraee said.
“Hamas is trying to rebuild its capabilities in the area, and therefore the IDF (army) will work with great force against terrorist organisations in the area.”
Israeli forces have regularly struck Jabalia and Beit Lahia, as well as other regions of northern Gaza, since the army began its ground campaign in the beleaguered territory on October 27.
Israel’s enormous military campaign in Gaza began on October 7, when Hamas launched an unprecedented offensive on southern Israel, killing more than 1,170 people, the majority of them were civilians, according to an AFP calculation of official Israeli data.
According to the health ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, Israel’s retaliatory bombardment has killed at least 34,943 individuals, the majority of them are women and children.