Israel orders more Gaza evacuations after school shelter attack kills scores

11/8/2024 17:06

        Israel expanded evacuation orders in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip overnight, forcing tens of thousands of Palestinian residents and displaced families to leave in the dark as explosions from tank shelling reverberated around them.
        
        The Israeli military said it was attacking militants from the Hamas group - which administered Gaza before the war - who were using those areas to stage attacks and fire rockets. On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike on a school where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in Gaza City killed at least 90 people, according to the civil defence service, prompting an international outcry.
        
        The Israeli military said it had struck a Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant command post, an allegation the two groups rejected as a pretext, and killed 19 militants.
        
        In Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip, the evacuation instruction covered districts in the centre, east and west, making it one of the largest such orders in the 10-month-old conflict, two days after tanks returned to the east of the city.