The Gaza Civil Defense reported on Monday night that 40 people were killed in an Israeli attack on the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in Khan Younis, with Israel stressing that it targeted a Hamas “command center”.
An Israeli military plane “struck major Hamas terrorists operating from a command and control center in the Khan Younis humanitarian zone,” the Israeli military said. A spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense told AFP that there were “40 martyrs and 60 wounded.”
“The occupation’s (Israel, editor’s note) allegations about the presence of resistance fighters are a blatant lie,” Hamas responded in a statement on the Telegram messaging service.
Earlier Monday, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of several areas in the northwest of the Gaza Strip where it is continuing its offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, after more than 11 months of war.
A map calling for the evacuation of various neighborhoods “considered dangerous combat zones” was published on the social network X by an Israeli army spokesman, Avichay Adraee.
“Terrorist organizations are again firing rockets at the State of Israel and committing terrorist acts from this area,” he said in Arabic.
The Israeli army had announced at the beginning of January that it had “completed the dismantling of the military structure” of Hamas in the north, before launching its ground operations in the centre and south of the Palestinian territory.
Earlier Monday, the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian group in Gaza, claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on Israel, particularly on the city of Ashkelon.
No link has been established so far between the rocket attacks and the evacuation order.
The Israeli military has repeatedly issued evacuation orders in preparation for military operations in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza, in 2007.
Nearly the entire population of Gaza has been displaced at least once in nearly a year of war. Tens of thousands of people leave their homes or makeshift shelters with each evacuation, taking their belongings with them, sometimes without knowing where to go.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its unprecedented October 7 attack in southern Israel that killed 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted that day, 97 are still being held in Gaza, 33 of whom have been declared dead by the army.
In response, Israel launched a major offensive in Gaza that left at least 40,972 dead, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry in the Gaza Strip.