Gaza Residents Told To Leave 'For Own Safety'

The Israeli military has ordered Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate “for their own safety”.

Chief military spokesman Brigadier General Motti Almoz said Israel planned to hit the area with heavy force in the next 24 hours as an offensive against militants in the area is stepped up.

Officials say the area has been used to fire rockets at Tel Aviv.

The military says it will send messages to residents overnight telling them to leave.

Israel began its offensive on Tuesday in response to weeks of rocket attacks from Hamas militants in Gaza, who are understood to have fired some 600 missiles into the country.

Israel, which says it has struck more than 1,000 targets, has begun massing troops on the border with Gaza, ahead of a possible ground offensive.

Gaza health officials say 15 people have been killed in the latest Israeli airstrike that attacked the home of Gaza’s police chief.

A source told Reuters that Tayseer al Batsh was in a critical condition and most of the dead are from the same family.

It is the deadliest single attack during the five-day conflict, which has now claimed more than 140 lives.

No Israelis have died so far, and many of the rockets fired into the country have been intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system.

Two rockets fired from Lebanon hit the Nahariya region in northern Israel late on Saturday, an army spokeswoman told AFP.

The Israeli military said it responded with artillery fire toward “the source of fire”, according to AP.

Military officials say they believe the attack was carried out by a small Palestinian group in an act of solidarity with Hamas militants, who control the Gaza Strip.

Hamas unleashed a barrage of rocket fire on Saturday after warning it planned to target Tel Aviv.

Three rockets apparently targeting the Jerusalem area fell short, hitting Hebron and Bethlehem, according to the Israeli army and Palestinian security sources.

The army said four rockets were fired at Tel Aviv. Three were intercepted above the city and the other hit open ground south of it.

The United Nations has called for a ceasefire, and the chief diplomats from Britain, France, Germany and the US are set to discuss how to achieve this on the sidelines of talks in Vienna on Sunday about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Egypt’s state news agency has reported that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi met with Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair in an attempt to secure a truce.

Israel has been criticised for the civilian casualties that have resulted from its offensive on one of the most densely populated territories in the world.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said a majority of those killed so far are civilians.

Israel says it is acting in self-defence and accuses Hamas of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields by firing rockets from there.

It said Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Gaza militant groups use religious sites to conceal weapons and establish underground tunnel networks, deliberately endangering civilians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will not end the campaign until he achieves his goal of stopping the rocket attacks from a “terrorist organisation which calls for our destruction”.

Former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya said: “(Israel) is the one that started this aggression and it must stop, because we are (simply) defending ourselves.”

Gaza Residents Told To Leave 'For Own Safety'