Israel orders Palestinians to evacuate Rafah in south Gaza

Israel's military has called for the evacuation of Palestinians from eastern Rafah, ahead of a long-threatened ground invasion of the southern Gaza city, the prospect of which has triggered widespread global alarm.

The evacuation announcement on Monday followed intensified disagreement between Israel and Hamas over the group's demands to end the seven-month war, during weekend talks in Cairo.

Consultations between two other mediators, the United States and Qatar, were expected in Doha.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah regardless of any truce, and despite concerns from the United States, other countries and aid groups.

The "limited and temporary" evacuation order aimed "to get people out of harm's way" and followed a rocket strike on Sunday that Israel's military said came from an area adjacent to Rafah and killed four soldiers.

"An Israeli offensive in Rafah would mean more civilian suffering and deaths," said the main aid agency in Gaza, the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA.

It added that it "is not evacuating."

Hundreds of thousands evacuated

When asked how many people should move, a military spokesman said: "The estimate is around 100,000 people."

However, Ossama al-Kahlut, a Palestine Red Crescent representative in east Rafah, said the designated evacuation zone hosts around 250,000 people, many of whom are already uprooted from elsewhere in Gaza.

"My family and I, 13 people, don't know where we can go," one resident, Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar, 36, said.

While some people were packing belongings, few were seen in the streets on Monday walking toward the designated areas.

Repeatedly bombed

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said Israel had yet to present "a credible plan to genuinely protect the civilians who are in harm's way", and without such a plan Washington "can't support a major military operation going into Rafah."

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has conducted a brutal offensive that has killed at least 34,683 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory's health ministry.

About 1.2 million people are sheltering in Rafah, according to the World Health Organization.

Soon after the war in Gaza began on October 7, Israel told Palestinians living in the north of the Palestinian territory to move to "safe zones" in the south — including Rafah near the Egyptian border.

But Rafah has been repeatedly bombed from the air and Palestinians frequently say that no area of Gaza is safe.

In late March, Gaza's Health Ministry said at least 12 people were killed when an air strike hit a tent for displaced people in al Mawasi.

On Sunday, medics and first responders in Gaza said Israeli air strikes killed 16 people in Rafah, hours after the Hamas rocket fire which killed the Israeli soldiers.