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Israel kills 14 people in northern Gaza, orders evacuations in south

Civil Emergency Service says its operations in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun have been hit by fuel shortages

Israeli military strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, most of them in the town of Beit Lahiya on the northern edge, medics said, as the army issued new evacuation orders in the south of the tiny enclave.

Medics said eight people had been killed in a series of strikes in Beit Lahiya while four others were killed elsewhere in Gaza City.

An Israeli air strike later killed two people and wounded others in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, in the northern Gaza Strip, medics said.

The Israeli army has been operating in Jabalia and also in the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun since October. Its forces have killed hundreds of militants in the three locations since the operation began, the army has said.

Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that has been ruling Gaza, and the Islamic Jihad armed wing have said their fighters killed several Israeli soldiers in ambushes during that same period.

Palestinians have accused Israel's army of trying to drive people from the northern edge of Gaza with forced evacuations and bombardments to create a buffer zone. The army denies this and says it has returned there to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in an area from which it had previously cleared them.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said its operations in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun had now been halted for nearly four weeks due to Israeli attacks on their teams and to fuel shortages.

On Tuesday it said 13 of 27 vehicles in central and southern Gaza Strip were also out of operation due to fuel shortages. It said 88 members of the Civil Emergency Service had been killed, 304 wounded and 21 detained by Israel since the war started.

Evacuation orders

The Israeli army issued evacuation orders on Tuesday to residents in northern districts of Khan Younis, a town in the south of the Gaza Strip, citing the firing of rockets by militants from those areas. The orders prompted the hurried exodus of families, mostly before dawn, in a westerly direction.

"For your own safety, you must evacuate the area immediately and move to the humanitarian zone," the army said in a statement on X.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in the enclave. Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been internally displaced, some as many as 10 times since the war began last year.

Israel launched its campaign in the densely populated Palestinian enclave after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's military campaign has killed more than 44,400 Palestinians, injured many others, and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.