Israel orders more Gazans to flee, bombs areas where it sends them
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[December 04, 2023]
By Arafat Barbakh and Mohammed Salem
GAZA (Reuters) -Israel ordered people out of swathes of the main
southern city in the Gaza Strip on Monday as it pressed its ground
campaign deep into the south, sending desperate residents fleeing even
as it dropped bombs on areas where it told them to go.
Israel's military posted a map on 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. Three arrows pointed south and west,
telling people to head towards the Mediterranean coast and towards Rafah,
near the Egyptian border.
The Israeli military's chief Arabic-language spokesperson later said in
a post on X that the central road out of Khan Younis to the north
"constitutes a battlefield" and was now shut. Access would be permitted
on the western outskirts of the city, while in Rafah, a short "tactical
suspension of military activities" would allow access until the early
afternoon.
In Rafah, bombing at one site overnight had torn a crater the size of a
basketball court out of the earth. A dead toddler's 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.
Later they chanted "God is Great" 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.
"We were asleep and safe, they told us it was a safe area, Rafah and
all," said Salah al-Arja, owner of one of the houses destroyed at the
site.
"There were children, women and martyrs," he said. "They 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."
Israel blames Hamas for 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.
As many as 80 percent of Gaza's 2.3 million people have fled their homes
in an Israeli bombing campaign that has reduced much of the crowded
coastal strip to a desolate wasteland. Medical officials in the enclave
say bombing has killed more than 15,500 people, with thousands more
missing and feared buried in rubble.
Israel launched its assault to annihilate Gaza's ruling Hamas Islamists
in retaliation for an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by its gunmen, who
killed 1,200 people and seized 240 hostages according to Israeli
tallies.
Israeli 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. Tanks driving into Gaza from the border
fence in the east along the road that divides Khan Younis from the city
of Deir al-Balah further north have reached a flour mill halfway to the
Mediterranean coast, cutting off the main north-south route, residents
say.
ISRAEL'S GOALS IN NORTH 'ALMOST MET'
"The goals in the northern section have almost been met," the commander
of Israel's armoured corps, Brigadier-General Hisham Ibrahim, told
Israel's Army Radio. "We are beginning to expand the ground manoeuvre to
other parts of the Strip, with one goal: to topple the Hamas terrorist
group."
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Palestinians inspect a house destroyed in an Israeli strike, amid
the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist
group Hamas, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, December 4,
2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
The 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.
Israel 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.
The 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.
In 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.
"Why did they eject us from our homes in Gaza (City) if they planned
to kill us here?" he said.
At a home in Khan Younis that was struck overnight, flames licked
the collapsed masonry and grey smoke billowed out from the rubble. A
child's stuffed toy of a sheep lay in a pile of dust. Boys were
picking through the wreckage. Next door, Nesrine Abdelmoty stood
amid damaged furniture in the rented room where she lives with her
divorced daughter and two-year-old baby.
"We were sleeping at 5 a.m. when we felt things collapse, everything
went upside down," she told Reuters. "They told (people) to move
from the north to Khan Younis, since the south is safer. And now,
they've bombed Khan Younis. Even Khan Younis is not safe now, and
even if we move to Rafah, Rafah is not safe as well. Where do they
want us to go?"
Israel's closest ally the United States has publicly called on it to
do more to safeguard civilians in the southern part of Gaza than in
last month's campaign in the north, especially as there are so many
people already homeless there.
Israel permitted additional humanitarian supplies to enter the
enclave during the truce, but the United Nations says this was
paltry compared to the territory's vast humanitarian need, and has
now been interrupted by the renewed fighting.
During the truce, Hamas released 105 of its hostages in return for
240 Palestinian detainees. But with most women, and children
hostages now believed free, the truce collapsed over terms for
releasing more, including Israeli men and soldiers. Israel says 136
hostages are still being held.
(Reporting by Mohammed Salem and Roleen Tafakji in Gaza, Maayan
Lubell, Ari Rabinovich and Emily Rose in Jerusalem, Maggie Fick in
Beirut, Andrew Mills in Doha, Nandita Bose in Dubai, Idrees Ali,
Steve Holland and Phil Stewart in Washington; Writing by David
Lawder, Lincoln Feast and Peter Graff; Editing by Stephen Coates,
Sharon Singleton and Mark Heinrich)
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