IDF carries out ‘extensive’ airstrikes in Khan Younis area amid heavy Gaza fighting.

Residents of the Qatari-funded Hamad Town residential complex in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, carry some of their belongings as they flee their homes after receiving notification from the Israeli army of an imminent strike, on December 2, 2023.

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Palestinians look at destruction after strikes In Khan Younis in Gaza Strip on Dec. 1, 2023.



Rocket fire from Gaza continues; IDF says it hit more than 400 terror targets over past day, including mosque used as command cente; IDF asks Gazan civilians to move to safe zones.

The Israel Defense Forces carried out “extensive” strikes against the Hamas terror group in south Gaza Friday overnight and into Saturday, while calling on Palestinians to evacuate from areas near the Israeli border, indicating ground operations in the southern part of the Strip were due to start soon.

In a statement Saturday morning, the IDF said it carried out airstrikes against over 400 targets across the Strip in the past day since fighting resumed. Ground, air and naval forces were all involved in the operations.

The military said fighter jets attacked over 50 targets in the Khan Younis area in “extensive” strikes in the southern part of the enclave.

Meeting reservists near the Gaza border, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the army was striking areas it had not hit before. Gallant said the commanders of Hamas’s battalions in northern Gaza “already know very well what the IDF can do,” while “Hamas battalion commanders in Khan Younis and Rafah [in southern Gaza] also understand very well what happened to the others.”

Troops operating in northern Gaza located dozens of rockets and other weaponry hidden under boxes with UNRWA markings in a residential home, the military said.

Troops on the ground directed airstrikes on several targets, including a mosque that was used by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group as an operational headquarters.

The Navy also carried out strikes on Hamas infrastructure in the south, including on equipment used by the terror group’s naval forces.

The military also said several terror cells were eliminated, and that targets hit included an ammunition depot.

The ground troops in northern Gaza were mostly operating in Gaza City and Beit Lahiya.

Israeli believes some of Hamas’s leadership is present in Khan Younis, and plans to expand ground operations there.

The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip said that 240 people had been killed in the enclave since fighting renewed on Friday.

Hamas says the Israeli military campaign has killed more than 15,000 people, mostly civilians. These numbers have not been independently verified and are believed to include Palestinian civilians killed by errant rockets launched by terror groups as well as Palestinian terrorists killed by Israel.

The fighting came after Hamas violated the temporary truce with Israel on Friday by failing to provide a list of hostages it intended to release by 7 a.m. as stipulated in the agreement that had been in place since last week, and also launched rockets toward Israeli communities prior to that time.

Israel’s Mossad spy agency said Saturday that a negotiating team that had been in Qatar for hostage mediation had been ordered home with talks on extending the truce reaching a “dead end.”

Gazans reported the IDF had dropped flyers in Khan Younis calling on residents to move south to Rafah, warning that the area is dangerous.

The IDF on Saturday began to use a map splitting the Gaza Strip into hundreds of small zones, to notify Palestinian civilians of active combat zones, including in southern Gaza where ground troops are expected to operate when the IDF expands its offensive. The map is intended to replace an IDF demand for mass evacuations as it did in the northern part of Gaza.

The IDF’s Arabic-language Spokesman, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, said on X that Palestinians in several zones in northern Gaza’s Jalabiya, Shejaiya and Zeitoun, should evacuate to “known shelters” shelters in the Daraj and Tuffah areas of Gaza City.

He also called on Palestinians in several zones in southern Gaza’s Khirbat Ikhza’a, Abasan, Bani Suheila and Ma’an — near the Israeli border — to head for shelters in Rafah.