Tel Aviv, 20 February 2024 (dpa/MIA) - Israel has ordered new evacuations from two neighbourhoods in Gaza City, indicating impending military operations there.

The calls was issued on Tuesday morning for the neighbourhoods of Zeitoun and Turkman, located in the north of the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops first moved into the area in November.

The residents were told to move to a designated area further south along the Mediterranean coast.

The UN says up to 1.7 million of the more than 2.2 million residents of the Gaza Strip have had to leave their homes since the war began on October 7.

Around 1.5 million people are crowded in Rafah, the southernmost city that sits on the border with Egypt.

Residents of the Gaza Strip are periodically told by Israel to flee ahead of military offensives. However, the corridors and areas designated by Israel as safe have often come under fire.

The Israeli air and ground offensive has rendered parts of the north uninhabitable. Some residents have returned to their homes, although the Israeli army tried to prevent this.

The war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel's history, carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations on October 7 in Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip.

They murdered more than 1,200 people in Israel and abducted 250 others to the coastal strip. Around 105 hostages were released as part of a prisoner exchange in November.

The aim of the Israeli offensive is to destroy the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas and free the remaining hostages, of whom Israel says at most around 100 are still alive.

Photo: MIA archive