A drone view shows smoke above Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, as seen from near Kibbutz Nir Am in southern Israel, December 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg/File Photo

Israeli forces carrying out a weeks-long offensive in northern Gaza ordered any residents remaining in Beit Hanoun to leave the town on Sunday, citing Palestinian terrorist rocket fire from the area, residents said.

The instruction to leave has caused a new wave of displacement, although it was not immediately clear how many people were affected, the residents said.

Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in northern Gaza is aimed at Hamas terrorists and preventing them from regrouping. Its instructions to civilians to evacuate are meant to keep them out of harm’s way, the military says.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.

Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fueling speculation Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.

The Israeli military announced its new push into the Beit Hanoun area on Saturday. It said the rocket fire into Israel continued throughout Sunday despite the intense operation there.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had lost communication with people still trapped in the town, and it was unable to send teams into the area because of the raid.

HOSPITALS

Health officials said an Israeli tank shell on Sunday had hit the upper floor of the Al-Ahly Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City near the X-ray division.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted members of the Hamas “Aerial Defence Unit,” who operated from the compound, saying the place no longer served as a hospital. It said the militants was using the compound to plan and execute attacks against Israeli troops in the immediate future.

On Friday, Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, detaining more than 240 Palestinians, including medics.

The military said the hospital had been used as a command center for Hamas, adding on Sunday that 15 of those detained had participated in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and that its operation there had killed about 20 militants.

Hamas denies Israel’s claim that its fighters operate from hospitals, and called for U.N. observers to be sent to Gaza’s medical facilities.

The raid on Kamal Adwan, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in the area out of service, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a post on X.