Preparing For New Attacks, Israel Orders North Gaza Residents To Evacuate

The condition of Gazans / UNRWA residents

JAKARTA - The Israeli military ordered residents in northern Gaza to move south ahead of the planned military operation today.

The residents joined tens of thousands of other Palestinians who were asked to leave the premises on Monday's evacuation order.

The army will operate with great force in the Jabalya and Nazla regions, north of Gaza City, and will continue to do so for a long time, according to Arabic-speaking military spokesman Avichay Adraee reported by CNN, Saturday, October 12.

"You have to vacate the area immediately," he said.

The IDF said the area, including a shelter in it, was considered a dangerous combat zone.

Residents were asked to move south to a location called the military's humanitarian zone'.

The zone, on the coastal region of Al Mawasi, is full of refugees and has been hit repeatedly by Israeli airstrikes including those that killed 19 people in September.

The military dropped a brochure on Saturday morning warning the public to evacuate immediately.

On Friday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said thousands of people were unable to leave northern Gaza despite evacuation orders from the military, due to gunfire and attacks around evacuation routes.

Palestinians fleeing the designated territory under Monday's order in northern Gaza were shot as they tried to leave.

In July, the United Nations reported that about nine out of 10 people in Gaza had become internally displaced, many of them many times, because of repeated evacuation orders across the region.

The aid organizations previously said a new wave of evacuation orders made the provision of emergency rations increasingly difficult.

"No food has entered northern Gaza since early October, causing 1 million people to risk starvation," the World Food Program (WFP) told CNN.