The civilians were being called to move to an expanded humanitarian zone in the al-Mawasi and Khan Younis areas of southern Gaza.
At 8 a.m. the Israel Defense Forces started to drop flyers in eastern Rafah, send text messages, and make phone calls to Palestinians with instructions on the areas that need to be evacuated, and which routes to take to a designated humanitarian zone.
The evacuation order only applied to some of the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, and not the entire city in southern Gaza for now, although Israel has vowed to operate throughout the area, considered to be Hamas’s last major redoubt.
Israeli officials have said the terror group has six remaining battalions in the Gaza Strip, four of them in Rafah: Yabna (South), Shaboura (North), Tel Sultan (West) and East Rafah. Two more Hamas battalions remain in central Gaza, in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah camps. READ MORE
