The Israeli army issued new evacuation orders for residents in areas in an eastern suburb of Gaza City, leading to a new wave of displacement on Sunday, Palestinian medics said, and a hospital director in Gaza was also wounded in an Israeli drone attack.
The new orders for the Shujaiya suburb, published by an IDF spokesman in X on Saturday evening, blamed Palestinian militants firing rockets from that heavily built-up area in the northern Gaza Strip.
“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” an army leaflet said.
The military wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for launching the missile on Saturday, and said it targeted an Israeli army base on the border.
Footage circulated on social media and Palestinian media, whose authenticity Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shujaiya on donkey carts and rickshaws, while others walked, including children carrying backpacks.
Residents and Palestinian media said that families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday – the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the conflict began 13 months ago.
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In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Maghazi and Bureij camps since Saturday evening.
Adding to the misery of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, most of whom have been repeatedly displaced, heavy winter rains have flooded hundreds of tents across the Strip, ruining food and washing away the plastic and tarpaulin sheets that protected them from the elements.
Rami (37 years old), a man from Gaza City who was displaced to a former football field, said: “We ran in the middle of the night, the rainwater flooded the tent, the food ran out, the children screamed and I fear they will get sick.” Reuters via messaging app.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said that thousands of displaced people were affected by seasonal floods and called on donors to provide new tents and caravans to protect them.
In northern Gaza, where Israeli forces have been working against a regrouping of Hamas fighters since early last month, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, wounding hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya.
“This will not prevent us from completing our humanitarian mission, and we will continue to carry out this mission no matter the cost,” Abu Safiya said in a video statement distributed by the Ministry of Health on Sunday.
“We are targeted daily. They have been targeting me for a while but that will not deter us,” he said from his hospital bed.
Israeli forces say militants use civilian buildings including residential complexes, hospitals and schools to cover operations. Hamas denies this and accuses Israeli forces of randomly targeting populated areas.
Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in northern Gaza that are barely functioning, where the Health Ministry said Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical supplies, food and fuel from reaching them.
In the past few weeks, Israel said it had facilitated the delivery of medical supplies, fuel supplies and the transfer of patients from hospitals in northern Gaza in cooperation with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Residents in three besieged towns in northern Gaza, Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, said that Israeli forces have blown up hundreds of homes since they resumed their operations in an area that Israel said months ago was devoid of activists.
Palestinians say Israel appears intent on evacuating the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern end of Gaza, an accusation Israel denies.
The Israeli campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, displaced almost the entire population at least once, according to Gaza officials, while turning large swaths of narrow coastal land into rubble.
The war broke out in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas-led militants on October 7, 2023, in which militants killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli statistics.
