“Israeli orders to leave Gaza City will only bring further suffering to Palestinian families,” he said. The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs in a statement on Wednesday.
The World Food Programme also warns Just weeks after the world’s leading food agency said there was a high risk of famine across Gaza, it said the “unpredictable and volatile situation” in Gaza City was limiting its operations.
Most of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million residents have already been displaced, many of them multiple times. Areas designated by Israel as “safe zones” are already heavily congested, leaving little room to accommodate new refugees. Leaflets dropped in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday told residents they could travel “fast and without screening” this time, suggesting they would not have to go through the Netzarim checkpoint that divides the enclave and where the IDF frequently detains Palestinian men.
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“We categorically refuse to leave our homes,” Gaza City resident Anhar Sakik, 39, said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Sakik said she was staying with 35 relatives at her family home near the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel said on Monday, citing the source. Hamas The agency’s headquarters, containing infrastructure, operatives and weapons, was evacuated in October.
“We are under heavy artillery fire,” Sakik said, but she added: “We have been evacuated and we know the extent of the suffering that displaced people in the south have experienced and are still experiencing. We have no intention of fleeing because we don’t know where safety is.”
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry issued a statement on Wednesday advising residents to ignore evacuation orders and “move to areas closer to residential areas” if they felt at risk. Local journalists reported seeing only a few families fleeing along the route heading south on Wednesday afternoon.
“People are aware that death follows them wherever they go,” Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense forces, said by telephone.
The IDF initially withdrew from the city in January but later returned to carry out more targeted raids after Hamas fighters regrouped in areas with fewer Israeli troops.
The group’s military wing, the Izzuddin al-Qassam Brigades, published footage on social media on Wednesday of its fighters detonating explosives beneath an Israeli bulldozer and firing rockets at soldiers in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Twitter on Wednesday that emergency services were unable to reach sick and injured people.
“The operations room team has received dozens of humanitarian distress calls from Gaza city, but due to the danger in the targeted areas and the intensity of the bombardment, emergency services are unable to reach the scene,” it said in a statement.
Sakik said her elderly mother is sick and her children are “living in fear.”
Her 8-year-old son, Zaid, refuses to leave her side, she said, adding: “At least he says if they kill us, I’ll be in your arms.”
At around 6:30 p.m. local time, Sakik sent a message reporting heavy artillery fire nearby, but communication was then lost.
Other things to know
Israel sent a delegation to Doha on Wednesday to take part in ceasefire talks.That’s according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential negotiations.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel had “eliminated or injured” 60 percent of Hamas fighters. He said remarks He informed the Knesset that “the majority of the brigade” had been “disbanded.”
The two people killed in Tuesday’s Hezbollah rocket attack in the Golan Heights have been identified as a couple. The Golan Heights Regional Council announced on Wednesday that Noa and Nir Baranes, parents of three, were killed in the attack as they were returning home. “The entire Golan Heights community is shocked, saddened and mourned,” the council said.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was “investigating reports of civilian casualties” in the attack near a school in the eastern city of Khan Younis. Gaza’s health ministry said at least 25 people were killed and 53 wounded in the attack, which had been taking shelter at the school, which had been used by displaced civilians. The Israel Defense Forces said it had used “precision weapons” to strike “terrorists from Hamas’ military wing.”
The IDF also announced that it had concluded a two-week operation in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. The Israeli army ordered residents in the area to evacuate on June 27. It said on Wednesday it had destroyed eight tunnels and eliminated more than 150 militants.
At least 38,295 people have been killed and 88,241 injured in Gaza since the war began. of Gaza Ministry of Health Israel announced the attack on Wednesday, making no distinction between civilians and combatants but saying the majority of the dead were women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and 325 soldiers They have been killed since the start of the military operation in Gaza.
Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
