The Israeli army on Monday ordered a new evacuation of areas in the Khan Younis and Rafah governorates in the southern Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have already been forced to flee fighting several weeks ago.
Evacuation was ordered in the towns of al-Qarara, Bani Suheila and other towns in the east of the two governorates, army spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a statement.
Witnesses told AFP that many residents had left the areas after being ordered to evacuate.
Projectile fire towards Israel
This comes after 20 projectiles were fired at Israeli soil from the Khan Younis region on Monday morning.
The al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, announced in a short statement that they had “strike[ed]” in a “concentrated” manner the Israeli localities around Gaza.
After launching its ground offensive on October 27 in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army gradually moved towards the south of the territory, ordering the evacuation of the areas it was targeting, in order, according to it, to target the Islamist movement Hamas, against which it has been at war since October 7.
On May 7, she said she was launching an operation in Rafah, in the far south of the Palestinian territory, to eliminate, according to her, the last battalions of Hamas.
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by the October 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians. In response, the Israeli army launched a large-scale offensive in Gaza that claimed the lives of 37,900 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.