The Israeli military on Monday ordered the forced evacuation of the southern Gaza city of Rafah and other nearby areas as it is ramping up attacks on the Palestinian territory.
Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic language spokesman, ordered the residents of Rafah and surrounding areas to flee to al-Mawasi, a tent camp on the coast that had been designated as a so-called “humanitarian safe zone” but has been frequently targeted by Israeli attacks.
Adraee said the Israeli military “is returning to fight with great force to eliminate the capabilities of terrorist organizations in these areas.” Shortly after issuing the evacuation order, the IDF began attacking Rafah, killing at least two people, according to Al Jazeera.
Israel launched a major assault on Rafah in May 2024, which President Biden insisted at the time would be “limited,” but the attack left the city in ruin. Since then, Israel has controlled the Rafah border crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor on the Egypt-Gaza border.
The Israeli military was supposed to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor at the end of the first phase of the ceasefire, but it never did, one of Israel’s many violations of the truce deal. The renewed assault on the city is seen as an effort by Israel to expand its “buffer zone,” which refers to the land inside Gaza that’s occupied by the IDF.
Also on Monday, Palestinians in Khan Younis held a funeral procession for 15 medics who were killed by Israeli forces in Rafah about a week earlier. Among the dead were eight members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), six Gaza Civil Defense workers, and one UN staffer.
The rescue workers went missing and were later found buried in a mass grave in Rafah. Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the PRCS, said there were at least around 20 multiple gunshots in each one of them. “Israeli occupation forces brutally savagely executed the Civil Defence teams,” Basal said.
“This grave was located just meters from their vehicles, indicating the occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” Basal added.
