A picture taken from Rafah shows smoke billowing over Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip during an Israeli bombardment on December 20, 2023, amid the ongoing between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of large areas of Gaza’s main southern city, the United Nations says.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says Israel had released maps showing new areas covering about 20 percent of the Khan Younis city that have been marked for evacuation.
Before fighting broke out, the area was home to more than 110,000 people, OCHA says.
The area also includes 32 shelters that housed more than 140,000 internally displaced persons, the vast majority of whom were previously displaced from the north, it adds.
The Israeli army said Wednesday that “ground, aerial and naval operations were carried out on dozens of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure” on military command and control centers in Khan Younis.
