- author, Tom Bennett and Rushdie Abu’alouf
- role, BBC News London and Istanbul
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The Israeli military has ordered all residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the southern central Gaza Strip as operations intensify in the north.
Leaflets dropped from aircraft instructed “everyone in Gaza City” to leave the “dangerous fighting zone” through designated safe routes, shown as two roads leading to the shelters of Deir al-Baraf and Al-Zawayda.
The United Nations expressed deep concern over the evacuation order, which marks the second time the entire city of Gaza has been evacuated since the start of the war.
Over the past two weeks, Israeli forces have re-entered several areas where the military believes Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters have regrouped since the beginning of the year.
Hamas has warned that new activity in the Israeli city Fear of disrupting negotiations Talks on a possible ceasefire and hostage release agreement resumed in Qatar on Wednesday and are being attended by the Egyptian, US and Israeli intelligence chiefs as well as the Qatari prime minister.
Hamas leader Hossam Badran told AFP that Israel was “trying to put pressure on the negotiations by intensifying its bombing campaign, evacuations and massacres.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed Israel’s commitment to the agreement as long as “red lines” were respected.
‘I’m not leaving.’
It is estimated that more than 250,000 people still live in Gaza City.
Some people were seen fleeing south after Israeli forces dropped leaflets urging people to leave, but an Israeli official later told the BBC this was a recommendation, not an order.
But some didn’t want to leave.
“I will not leave Gaza [City]”We won’t make the stupid mistake that others have made – Israeli missiles don’t distinguish between north and south,” resident Ibrahim al-Barbari, 47, told the BBC.
“If death is my fate or the fate of my children, we will die at home with honour and dignity,” he said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had received calls from residents who were unable to leave their homes due to the intensity of the bombardment.
“Information coming from Gaza city indicates that residents are living in dire conditions. [Israeli] “Occupation forces continue to attack residential areas, forcing people from their homes and shelters,” the statement said.
In a statement early Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its forces “conducted counter-terrorism operations” throughout the night against Hamas and PIJ fighters operating inside the headquarters of the United Nations aid agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Gaza City.
The forces opened “designated corridors to facilitate the evacuation of civilians” from the area before entering the building and “eliminated the terrorists in close quarters combat,” it added.
There was no immediate comment from UNRWA.
The IDF also said it had killed dozens of militants and dismantled an underground tunnel route in the Shejaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City over the past day.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told the Israeli Knesset on Wednesday that 60 per cent of Hamas fighters had been killed or wounded since the Israeli offensive began, a figure the BBC could not independently verify.
On Tuesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights “I was surprised,” he said.“ The Israel Defense Forces ordered residents to evacuate “areas where Israeli military operations are ongoing and civilians are continuing to be killed and injured.”
They also warned that delivery areas were already severely overcrowded with Palestinians fleeing from other parts of Gaza, with little infrastructure and limited access to humanitarian aid.
The Israeli military launched an operation to destroy Hamas in Gaza following an unprecedented attack in southern Israel on October 7 that left some 1,200 people dead and 251 taken hostage.
More than 38,295 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Strip, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but reported that 14,680 children, women and elderly people were among the dead by the end of April.
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