GAZA
\nIsrael orders Gazans to evacuate targeted areas, thousands flee to designated \u2018safe\u2019 zones only to face bombings
\nIsrael ordered Palestinians to leave parts of the main southern city in the Gaza Strip on Monday even as its bombs rained down on areas where it had told them to go.
\nIsraeli troops and tanks also pressed the ground campaign against Hamas fighters in the south of the enclave after having largely gained control of the now-devastated north.
\nIsrael\u2019s military posted a map on social media platform X on Monday morning with around a quarter of the city of Khan Younis marked off in yellow as territory that must be evacuated at once.
\nThree arrows pointed south and west, telling people to head towards the Mediterranean coast and towards Rafah, near the Egyptian border.
\nDesperate Gazans in Khan Younis packed their belongings and headed towards Rafah. Most were on foot, walking past ruined buildings in a solemn and silent procession.
\nBut Rafah itself was coming under Israeli fire. The head of the United Nations agency in Gaza (UNWRA), Thomas White, said people there were themselves being forced to flee.
\n\u201cPeople are pleading for advice on where to find safety. We have nothing to tell them,\u201d he said on X.
\nBombing at one site in Rafah overnight had torn a crater the size of a basketball court out of the earth. A dead toddler\u2019s bare feet and black trousers poked out from under a pile of rubble. Men struggled with their bare hands to move a chunk of the concrete that had crushed the child.
\nLater they chanted \u201cGod is greatest\u201d and wept as they marched through the ruins carrying the body in a bundle, and that of another small child body wrapped in a blanket.
\n\u201cWe were asleep and safe, they told us it was a safe area, Rafah and all,\u201d said Salah al-Arja, owner of one of the houses destroyed at the site.
\n\u201cThere were children, women and martyrs,\u201d he said. \u201cThey tell you it is a safe area, but there is no safe area in all of the Gaza Strip, it is all lies and manipulations.\u201d
\nIsrael expands offensive in Gaza
\nIsrael accuses Hamas of putting civilians in danger by operating from civilian areas, including in tunnels which can only be destroyed by large bombs. Hamas denies it does so.
\nIsrael launched its assault to wipe out Hamas, which rules Gaza, in retaliation for an Oct.7 cross-border attack by its gunmen. They killed 1,200 people and seized 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
\nGaza\u2019s health ministry said on Monday that at least 15,899 Palestinians, 70% of them women or under 18s, have now been killed in Israeli air and artillery strikes on the enclave since Oct. 7. Thousands more are missing and feared buried in rubble.
\nAs many as 80% of Gaza\u2019s 2.3 million people have fled their homes in the Israeli bombing campaign that has reduced much of the crowded coastal strip to a desolate wasteland.
\nIsraeli forces largely captured the northern half of Gaza in November, and since a week-long truce collapsed on Friday they have swiftly pushed deep into the southern half.
\nTanks have driven into Gaza from the border fence and cut off the main north-south route, residents say. The Israeli military said the central road out of Khan Younis to the north \u201cconstitutes a battlefield\u201d and was now shut.
\nThe commander of Israel\u2019s armoured corps, Brigadier-General Hisham Ibrahim, told Army Radio the military had almost achieved its goals in northern Gaza.
\n\u201cWe are beginning to expand the ground manoeuvre to other parts of the Strip, with one goal: to topple the Hamas terrorist group,\u201d he said.
\nThe military released footage of troops patrolling in tanks and on foot, in fields and in badly damaged urban areas, and firing from weapons, without specifying the location in Gaza.
\nIsrael says its evacuation orders are aimed at protecting civilians from harm, and called on international organisations to help encourage Gazans to move to the areas labelled safe on Israeli maps.
\nThe United Nations said the areas in the south that Israel has ordered evacuated in the three days since the truce had housed more than 350,000 people before the war – not counting the hundreds of thousands now sheltering there from other areas.
\nIn Khan Younis, many of those taking flight on Monday were already displaced from other areas. Abu Mohammed told Reuters it was now the third time he had been forced to flee since abandoning his home in Gaza City in the north.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GAZA Israel orders Gazans to evacuate targeted areas, thousands flee to designated \u2018safe\u2019 zones only to face bombings Israel ordered Palestinians to leave parts of the main southern city in the Gaza Strip on Monday even as its bombs rained down on areas where it had told them to go. Israeli troops and tanks also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-372306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n