The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of new areas of northern Gaza, setting off a fresh wave of civilian displacements on Sunday as intense airstrikes continued across much of the territory.
In Jerusalem, a senior minister said the war in Gaza was far from over and that Israel would stay “for years” in the territory.
“Gaza will never be a threat to the state of Israel, no matter how long it is going to take … I think that we are going to stay in Gaza for a long time … I think most people understand that that will be years, “said Avi Dichter, a member of Israel’s security cabinet.
The Israel Defense Forces said the evacuation orders for the Shujaiya neighbourhood were issued after Palestinian militants fired rockets at Israel on Saturday from a location within the densely populated district. Hamas’s armed wing said it had targeted an army base over the border.
The IDF routinely circulates warnings by social media, pamphlets and phone calls, telling people to leave areas that will be attacked. “For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” an IDF post on X said.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, witnesses and Palestinian media said. Images on social media showed hundreds leaving Shujaiya on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.
The humanitarian situation in northern Gaza has been described as apocalyptic by humanitarian officials, with tens of thousands suffering acute lack of water, sanitation, food and medical supplies.
The IDF has blockaded three north Gaza towns – Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun – since launching a major offensive early last month which it says is aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping there.
“We still have a lot of work to do … They [Hamas] have new people … They still have infrastructure because we haven’t reached every single place in all Gaza,” Dichter told reporters.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly said that one major aim of the military offensive in Gaza is to free hostages seized during the Hamas attacks into Israel in October last year. About 100 hostages are believed to remain in the territory, though half are thought to be dead.
On Saturday, a spokesperson for the armed wing of Hamas said a female Israeli hostage in the group’s custody had been killed in an unspecified northern area where the Israeli army had been operating.
Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said contact had been restored with the woman’s captors after a break of several weeks and it was established that the hostage was dead, but did not identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed.
The IDF said it was investigating the Hamas report. “Hamas continues to engage in psychological terrorism and act in a cruel manner,” a spokesperson said.
During their attack into Israel last year, Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza. About half of those abducted were released in a short-lived ceasefire in November.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, mostly civilians. Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million population have been displaced at least once, and swathes of the narrow coastal territory have been reduced to rubble.
People in northern Gaza say they fear the goal is to permanently depopulate a strip of territory as a buffer zone, which Israel denies, and say Israeli forces have blown up hundreds of houses since beginning the new offensive.
Dichter, a security veteran recently appointed to the food security portfolio, said that once there was “an agreement or end of the war” displaced people would be able to return home.
In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli airstrikes on the urban refugee camps of al-Maghazi and al-Bureij since Saturday night.
The new strikes come after a bloody few days, with Palestinian medics saying Israeli military strikes across Gaza killed at least 120 Palestinians on Friday and Saturday.
Other attacks were reported to have targeted the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, injuring its director.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel also intensified against the background of continuing negotiations. Analysts say both sides are seeking to better their negotiating position.
Hezbollah claimed in a statement on Sunday that it attacked the Ashdod naval base in south Israel with a squadron of drones. The Israeli military said it was unaware of the incident, which would be the first time a base so deep in Israel was targeted by Hezbollah in 13 months of fighting.
The Lebanon-based Islamist militant organisation, which is supported by Iran, also launched successive waves of rockets into northern and central Israel. Almost all were intercepted by Israel’s air defence systems though seven injuries were reported.
Israeli soldiers continued to advance on the ground in south Lebanon over the weekend, with clashes reported between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters in the coastal town of al-Bayada.
Hezbollah-affiliated media claimed its fighters were engaged in close-quarters fighting with Israeli forces who were cutting off roads to key villages in south Lebanon. Residents of Deir Mimas, a Christian village in the south, said Israeli soldiers installed a checkpoint on the road outside the village and instructed the 30 or so residents who remained in the town to stay in their homes until further notice.
An Israeli strike on an army centre killed a Lebanese soldier and wounded 18 others in the south-west between Tyre and Naqoura, Lebanon’s military said. The Israeli military expressed regret, saying the strike occurred in an area of combat against Hezbollah and that the military’s operations were directed solely against the militants.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 40 Lebanese troops since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, even as Lebanon’s military has largely kept to the sidelines.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, condemned the latest strike as an assault on the US-led ceasefire efforts, calling it a “direct, bloody message rejecting all efforts and ongoing contacts” to end the war.
