The Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad on Monday fired a barrage of rockets into Israel.
The attack was launched at a time when Israeli tanks have been advancing deeper into parts of the Gaza enclave, residents and officials said.
Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, officially stated its fighters fired rockets towards the territory occupied by Israel near the fence with Gaza in response to “the crimes of the Zionist enemy against our Palestinian people”.
Though around 20 rockets were fired, no casualties were reported, the Israeli military said. However, the attack proved the Israeli claims wrong, that the militants are running out of arms and ammunition.
Moreover, it showed the militants still possess rocket capabilities even after almost nine months of Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier said that Israel was nearing its goal of taking out the military capabilities of Hamas and other Palestinians groups fighting on the ground.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the rockets were fired from the Khan Younis area.
According to a Reuters report, residents of several neighbourhoods in eastern Khan Younis, which is in southern Gaza, have received audio messages from Israeli phone numbers ordering them to leave their homes.
“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the humanitarian zone,” Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted on social media platform X.
It is anticipated that the new evacuation order could mean Israeli forces will return to the area, which they left several weeks ago after offering extreme terror.
Meanwhile, violence also flared on Monday in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Palestinian health ministry said a woman and a boy were killed in the city of Tulkarm during an operation by Israeli forces, where an Islamic Jihad member was killed in an Israeli strike a day earlier.
Israeli forces deepened incursions into the Shejaia suburb of eastern Gaza City for a fifth day, and tanks advanced further in western and central Rafah, in southern Gaza near the border with Egypt, residents told Reuters.
The Israeli military said it had killed a number of militants in combat in Shejaia on Monday and found large amounts of weapons there.
Hamas said its fighters had lured an Israeli force into a booby-trapped house in the east of Rafah and blown it up, causing casualties.
The genocidal war launched by Israel has killed nearly 38,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, and has left more than 8,700 injured.
