CAIRO: Israeli forces on Wednesday issued new evacuation orders to Palestinians in areas of north Gaza that were among the first to be hit at the start of the war in October, after Palestinian groups fired a fresh volley of rockets into Israel.
Army spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted the evacuation orders for several districts in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, two now largely demolished towns into which Israeli tanks swept at the outset of Israel's ground invasion.
Fighting has continued in the Gaza Strip even as Israel braces for an expected assault in its north from Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah after the July 31 assassination in the Iranian capital Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Hamas named its Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar as successor to former political chief Ismail Haniyeh, the group said on Tuesday, in a move that reinforces the path pursued since the October 7 attack on Israel. "Hamas announces the selection of Commander Yahya Sinwar as the head of the political bureau of the movement, succeeding the martyr Commander Ismail Haniyeh," the movement said.
The Israeli military says it has killed dozens of Gaza gunmen in recent days and on Wednesday said troops had hit weapons-making facilities in the teeming district of Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the fighting have taken shelter.
Israeli tanks shelled Nuseirat and Bureij, two of Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps. Israel says Hamas fighters use civilian infrastructure for cover and to conceal operations posts and arms caches; Hamas denies this.
Palestinians say they continue to carry out ambush attacks on Israeli troops and armoured vehicles with explosive devices, and are still able to launch limited rocket salvoes into Israel.
On Tuesday, Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group, said it fired rockets into Israel in response to what it called Israeli "massacres of civilians".
The Israeli military said that over the past week Hamas had fired rockets from launchers embedded near two international humanitarian aid and distribution warehouses, including the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. Israeli forces had struck those sites, it added.
Hamas-led fighters set off the Gaza war on October 7 with a cross-border rampage into Israeli communities, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and detaining some 250 captives. In response, Israel has pursued a relentless assault on Gaza that has reduced much of the heavily populated coastal strip to ruins, killed at least 39,600 Palestinians and wounded over 91,500, according to Gaza health ministry figures. — Reuters
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