DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis on Saturday, as the country’s negotiators prepare to meet international mediators to discuss a proposed cease-fire.
The evacuation order is in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated from the area. The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.
The planned strike comes a day before officials from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy and discuss the ongoing hostage and cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel on Sunday, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
It’s the second evacuation order issued in a week that has included striking part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time had crowded.
According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering under there were constantly being displaced.
“Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don’t do any justice to what this means,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications. “These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”
Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza. Members of two families — parents and their two children as well as a mother and her two children — were wrapped in traditional Islamic white burial shrouds as community members gathered to perform funeral rights. As men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, weeping friends and neighbors approached individually to pay their final respects.
Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital confirmed the count and Associated Press journalists saw the bodies.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The U.N. estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.
The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
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Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco.
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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
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