Thousands of Palestinians evacuate eastern Rafah amid Israeli attack threat

People leave eastern Rafah before a threatened Israeli assault on the southern Gazan city. Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Thousands of people are evacuating from Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, hours after the Israeli military told residents and displaced people in eastern neighbourhoods to leave in advance of a long-threatened attack on the city and its environs.

Witnesses described frightened families leaving the city on foot, riding donkeys or packed with their belongings into overloaded trucks on Monday. Overnight Israeli air strikes had reinforced “panic and fear”, prompting more to heed the instructions to move.

“There is extreme tension in all areas of Rafah, including areas west of the city. Many have begun to think about evacuating, and many have already evacuated,” one witness said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had dropped leaflets and were broadcasting instructions through “announcements, text messages, phone calls and media broadcasts in Arabic” telling residents to head to an “expanded humanitarian zone” on the coast.

“This is an evacuation plan to get people out of harm’s way,” an Israeli military spokesperson told reporters.

Rafah has been sheltering more than a million people displaced from elsewhere in Gaza during the seven-month war and is a key logistics base for humanitarian operations across the territory. Dense tent encampments surround the city, and have also already crowded al-Mawasi, the coastal zone about 3 miles north-east to which Israel has told people to evacuate.

A rocket barrage launched by Hamas on Sunday from Rafah against a military base near the Kerem Shalom checkpoint in northern Gaza, which killed three soldiers and critically injured three others, may have spurred the Israeli decision.

The IDF spokesperson described the evacuation as “part of our plans to dismantle Hamas … we had a violent reminder of their presence and their operational abilities in Rafah yesterday”.

As indirect negotiations in Cairo for a ceasefire have faltered in recent days, senior Israeli officials have vowed repeatedly to launch an attack on Rafah, despite strong international opposition and calls for restraint from the US, Israel’s staunchest ally.

In a televised address on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, rejected Hamas’s demands for a definitive end to the war in Gaza, saying that any permanent ceasefire would allow the Islamist organisation to remain in power and pose a continuing threat to Israel.

Israeli officials have repeatedly said a “decisive victory” requires the destruction of a substantial Hamas combat force they say is based in Rafah, and the capture or killing of top Hamas leaders thought be sheltering in tunnels under the city, possibly with dozens of hostages taken by the militant Islamist organisation during the surprise 7 October attack on Israel which triggered the conflict.

On Monday, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, said Hamas’s apparent refusal of the most recent proposal from mediators in the ongoing ceasefire talks meant “military action in Rafah was required”.

A senior Hamas official described the Israeli order for civilians to evacuate Rafah as a “dangerous escalation that will have consequences”.

“The US administration, alongside the occupation, bears responsibility for this terrorism,” Sami Abu Zuhri told the Reuters news agency.

The IDF said the forthcoming operation was of “limited scope” and estimated it would need to move about 100,000 people.

“This matter will progress in a gradual manner according to ongoing situation assessments that will take place all the time,” a spokesperson said.

The IDF has said it is expanding the “humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi with additional tents and field hospitals.

Humanitarian officials and displaced people already living there describe acute overcrowding, inadequate food, limited fresh water and an almost total absence of sanitation. Israeli forces have also bombarded targets in Al-Mawasi at least twice in recent months.

Humanitarian officials have long warned of massive disruption to the effort to stave off famine in Gaza in the event of a major Israeli offensive in the south. Any attack on Rafah would lead to “the collapse of the aid response”, the Norwegian Refugee Council said on Monday.

The death toll in Gaza from the Israeli military offensive is now more than 34,500, mostly women and children. A reprisal strike on a house in Rafah reportedly killed at least three Palestinians. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as a human shield, a charge the militant Islamist organisation rejects.

The Hamas attack in October killed 1,200 mostly civilians in their homes or at a music festival in southern Israel. Around 250 hostages were taken, of whom 105 were released in return for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails during a short-lived truce in November.

Netanyahu has been under domestic pressure to obtain the release of the hostages in Gaza but appears so far to have prioritised the demands of far-right parties, which have threatened to withdraw crucial support for his coalition if a ceasefire deal is signed now.

Speaking a day after thousands of people again rallied in Tel Aviv demanding the release of the remaining Israeli captives, Netanyahu defended his decisions, saying his government had “been working around the clock to formulate an agreement that would return our hostages”.

Hamas and Israel had looked close to agreeing new terms to bring about a 40-day pause to hostilities and the release of dozens of hostages, but hopes of a breakthrough have dimmed in recent days.

A Hamas delegation which arrived in Cairo on Saturday announced late on Sunday it was leaving to consult its leadership. There has been no sign yet of a definitive response from the group to the deal proposed by mediators and accepted by Israel last week. Israel has yet to send a delegation to Cairo.

The conflict in Gaza continues to threaten broader regional violence and tensions.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist movement in Lebanon, said it had fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at an Israeli base in the Golan Heights.

Lebanese official media said three people had been wounded in an Israeli strike earlier on Monday in the country’s east, with the Israeli army saying it had struck a Hezbollah “military compound”.

Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged regular cross-border fire since war broke out in Gaza. In recent weeks Hezbollah has increased its attacks on northern Israel, and the Israeli military has struck deeper into Lebanese territory.

On Sunday, Netanyahu’s cabinet decided to shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel for as long as the war in Gaza continued, claiming the Qatari television network threatened national security.

Al Jazeera rejected the accusation as a “dangerous and ridiculous lie” that put its journalists at risk.