Israeli army orders Gaza City suburb evacuated, spurring new displacement wave

The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement on Sunday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, Palestinian medics said.
The new orders for the Shejaia suburb posted by the Israeli army spokesperson on X on Saturday night were blamed on Palestinian militants firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” the military’s post said. The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas’ armed wing, which said it had targeted an Israeli army base over the border.
Footage circulated on social and Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, residents and Palestinian media said – the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.
In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on the urban camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij since Saturday night.
In north Gaza, where Israeli forces have been operating against regrouping Hamas militants since early last month, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, injuring its director Hussam Abu Safiya.
“This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost,” Abu Safiya said in a video statement circulated by the health ministry on Sunday.
“We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us …,” he said from his hospital bed.
Israeli forces say armed militants use civilian buildings including housing blocks, hospitals and schools for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.
Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in north Gaza that are barely operational as the health ministry said the Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical, food and fuel supplies from reaching them.
In the past few weeks, Israel said it had facilitated the delivery of medical and fuel supplies and the transfer of patients from north Gaza hospitals in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organisation.
Residents in three embattled north Gaza towns – Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun – said Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in an area that Israel said months ago had been cleared of militants.
Palestinians say Israel appears determined to depopulate the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza, an accusation Israel denies.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, uprooted nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million population at least once, according to Gaza officials, while reducing wide swathes of the narrow coastal territory to rubble.
The war erupted in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas-led militants on October 7th, 2023 in which gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
In southern Lebanon, at least one soldier was killed and 18 others injured, some seriously, after an Israeli attack targeted an army centre in the town of Al-Amiriya on the Al-Qalila-Tyre road, the Lebanese army said on Sunday.
The attack caused severe damage to the facility, the army added in a post on X.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the incident.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said in a statement that Israel had sent “a direct and bloody message rejecting all efforts to reach a ceasefire, to bolster the Lebanese army’s presence in the south and to implement UN resolution 1701″.
“This aggression is a matter for the international community, which is silent about what is happening to Lebanon,” Mikati added.
UN Resolution 1701, adopted in 2006, ended a month-long war between Israel and Hizbullah by establishing a ceasefire and creating a buffer zone between the Litani river and the Israel-Lebanon border in a bid to promote long-term regional stability.
An Israeli man who went missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found murdered, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office said on Sunday, denouncing his death as a “heinous anti-Semitic terrorist act”.
Zvi Kogan, a rabbi who worked in the UAE for an Orthodox Jewish group called Chabad, vanished on Thursday.
“The state of Israel will use all means at its disposal to bring the criminals responsible for his death to justice,” the prime minister’s statement said.
The UAE foreign ministry did not immediately comment on news the body of Kogan, who also held joint Moldovan nationality, had been discovered.
Israeli authorities reissued their recommendation against all non-essential travel to the UAE and said visitors currently there should minimise movement and remain in secure areas.
In Jordan, a gunman was dead and three policemen injured after a shooting near the Israeli embassy in the country’s capital, Ammam, a security source and state media said on Sunday.
Police shot a gunman who had fired at a police patrol in the Rabiah neighbourhood of Amman, state news agency Petra reported, citing public security, adding investigations were ongoing.
Jordan’s government communications minister, Mohamed Momani, described the shooting as a terror attack that targeted public security forces in the country. He said in a statement that investigations into the attack were under way.
Jordanian police had earlier cordoned off an area near the heavily policed embassy after gunshots were heard, witnesses said. Two witnesses said police and ambulances rushed to the Rabiah neighbourhood, where the embassy is located.
The area is a flashpoint for frequent demonstrations against Israel. The kingdom has witnessed some of the biggest peaceful rallies across the region as anti-Israel sentiment runs high over the war in Gaza.
Police had called on residents to stay in their homes as security personnel searched for the culprits, a security source said.
Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Many have family ties on the Israeli side of the Jordan river.
Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel is unpopular among many citizens who see normalisation of relations as betraying the rights of their Palestinian compatriots. – Reuters