The Israeli army on Monday ordered the Palestinian population to urgently evacuate areas in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, hours after announcing the interception of a rocket fired from there against southern Israel.

This order concerns several — at least five — “squares” designated by the Israeli army north of the city of Khan Yunis. It is the first in weeks involving this part of the small Palestinian enclave. The Israeli army has been concentrating its operations in the northern part of the region lately.

“Terrorists are again firing rockets against the State of Israel” and “for your safety, you must urgently leave (…) immediately and move to the humanitarian zone,” Lt. Col. Avihai Andrai, an Israeli military spokesman, said via X for the Arabic-speaking audience.

A map uploaded by Lt. Col. Andrai shows the areas where residents should be urgently evacuated; the officer urged them to move toward the coast, which the Israeli military calls a “humanitarian zone.”

The Israeli military earlier said it had intercepted a “missile” that it said had been fired from Han Younis. The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, claimed responsibility for “rocket launches” at targets in southern Israel.

Since the outbreak of war in early October 2023, triggered by an unprecedented Hamas assault on southern Israel with a base in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly promised that his country’s military will achieve total victory over the armed movement.

But after conducting operations from the north to the southern edge of the enclave, the Israeli military has repeatedly returned to areas where it said it had already rooted out Hamas, to face what it described as a regrouping of Palestinian Islamist movement forces.

The Israeli army thus began almost two months ago, on October 6, a new major offensive in the northern Gaza Strip.

The raid by Hamas’ military arm in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 killed 1,208 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data, which includes hostages killed in captivity or already in captivity. dead when transported to the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s devastating, large-scale military operations in Gaza have since killed at least 44,466 people, most of them civilians, according to the latest figures from the Hamas government’s health ministry, which are deemed reliable by the UN.