Tel Aviv, 23 August 2024 (dpa/MIA) - The Israeli army told residents of several neighbourhoods in the northern part of Gaza to flee on Friday, ahead of a new military operation following repeated rocket attacks.

People should go to shelters west of the city of Gaza, according to an appeal issued by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman in Arabic.

Amid ongoing shelling from the area, the IDF plans to take action against the Palestinian Islamist Hamas and other terrorist organisations there.

Aid organizations are increasingly critical of the IDF's repeated calls for civilians in the Gaza Strip to flee.

"The constant evacuation orders are wearing down families in Gaza and massively hindering life-saving aid," said Martin Frick, head of the Berlin office of the UN World Food Programme. "Almost everyone in Gaza has been displaced by the successive evacuation orders since October 2023."

Overall, about 86% of the embattled coastal strip is an evacuation area, he said. In August alone, numerous calls to flee affected a quarter of a million people. "Some families are fleeing for the tenth time."

People are hungry and disease is spreading in the few places where people seek shelter, he said. The areas are also intensely overcrowded, the agency says. "This daily horror has become an alarming normality," said Frick.

The IDF said two projectiles were fired from the northern Gaza Strip towards the Israeli border town of Sderot in the early evening. One was intercepted while the other landed in an open area. Reports of injuries were not initially available.

Photo: dpa