Israeli Military Orders Civilians to Leave More Areas in Southern Gaza

Gazans fled from the northern region. (Source: UNRWA/Ashraf Amra)

JAKARTA - The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) ordered civilians to leave most of the Gaza Strip, including a number of neighborhoods in the southern part of the territory, after they continued military attacks there.

The Israeli military announced they had begun carrying out operations in the southern region of Gaza, while ground operations in the northern region continued, after a ceasefire with the Hamas group that had been running for a week ended last week. The IDF told people to move further south.

"For your safety, we invite you to move to the well-known IDP shelters in the Al-Fukhari, Al-Shaboura, Al-Zuhur, and Tal Al-Sultan neighborhoods," said the IDF in a statement published on social media, reported by CNN, December 4.

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Meanwhile, it is unclear how many people in Gaza have access to social media due to unreliable electricity and internet access due to the war.

Earlier on Sunday, the IDF told people to evacuate several areas southeast of Khan Younis, a town in southern Gaza where many people have sought refuge in recent weeks.

Later that evening, the IDF instructed people to leave several areas in northern Gaza, including Jabalya, Shejaiya, Zaytoun, and Gaza's Old City. Many areas had previously been the target of large-scale IDF attacks.

The IDF itself released a new map of Gaza on Friday, dividing the Gaza area into hundreds of sectors called "evacuation zones."

It said it would use the map to advise people to evacuate civilian areas where Hamas said it had placed military infrastructure.

The IDF also distributed leaflets in the southern region of Gaza that included a QR code that linked to a map when scanned, if the user had internet access, which is highly uneven in Gaza.

Separately, the UN estimates that up to 1.8 million people in Gaza, or nearly 80 percent of the population, have become internally displaced because they have had to leave their homes.