Israel bombs areas where it tells Gazans to flee

Israel ordered people out of swathes of the main southern city in the Gaza Strip yesterday 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 yesterday 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” was due to allow access until yesterday 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.

The latest violence took place despite calls from the United States — Israel’s closest ally — for Israel to limit harm to Palestinian civilians in the new phase of its offensive, focused on the south.

Israel’s military yesterday issued a situational update, in which it claimed that “ground troops are continuing to operate in the Gaza Strip in parallel to Israeli air force strikes on approximately 200 Hamas targets”.

Dozens of Israeli tanks entered the southern part of the Gaza Strip near Khan Yunis yesterday, witnesses told AFP. Armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers were also seen.

As Israel’s military widened its ground offensive, Palestinian officials said more than 800 people killed since Saturday, reports Al Jazeera online.

At least 15,899 Palestinians, 70 percent of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7, the health ministry in Gaza said yesterday.

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.

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.

“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.”

Gaza residents said tanks had cut off the road between Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, effectively dividing the Gaza Strip into three.

Bombardments from war planes and artillery were also concentrated on Khan Younis and Rafah, residents said, and hospitals were struggling to cope with the flow of wounded.

Meanwhile, attacks on shipping in the southern Red Sea on Sunday heightened fears of the conflict spreading, reports Reuters.

The US Defense Department said three commercial ships were attacked by Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthi movement in international Red Sea waters, and a US destroyer operating in the area shot down three drones as it responded to distress calls.

The Red Cross president arrived in war-torn Gaza yesterday, calling for the protection of civilians in the Palestinian territory, where she warned that human suffering was “intolerable”.

In a separate development, at least 60 Palestinians, including former prisoners, have been detained in Israeli forces’ raids in the occupied West Bank overnight and yesterday morning.