Israel redoubles warnings for Gaza residents to move south

While workers at an Israeli military base continued efforts through the Jewish Sabbath to identify the more than 1,300 people killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, Israel dropped leaflets from the air and redoubled warnings on social media for more than 1 million Gaza residents to move south.

The military says it is trying to clear away civilians ahead of a concentrated campaign against Hamas militants in the north, including in what it said were underground hideouts in Gaza City. Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.

Israel has maintained a blockade over Gaza since Hamas — which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States — seized control of the territory in 2007. The bitter enemies have fought four wars since then.

The evacuation directive covers an area with 1.1 million residents, or about half the territory’s population. The Israeli military said “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians had heeded the warning and headed south. It gave Palestinians a six-hour window that ended Saturday afternoon to travel safely within Gaza along two main routes.

In Israel, meanwhile, workers at a military base received special rabbinical approval to continue identifying bodies of the more than 1,300 people, most civilians, killed by Hamas. Work is normally halted on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Be’eri and Kfar Azza, two southern border communities where Hamas terrorists slaughtered dozens of Israelis, to meet with soldiers and tour the ruins of bloodied homes.

Hundreds of relatives of the scores of Israelis and foreigners captured by Hamas and taken to Gaza gathered outside the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, demanding their release.

“This is my cry out to the world: Please help bring my family, my wife and three kids,” said Avihai Brodtz of Kfar Azza. Many expressed anger toward the government, saying they still have no information about their loved ones.

In a nationally broadcast address Saturday night, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, accused Hamas of trying to use civilians as human shields and issued a new appeal to Gaza residents to move south.

“The Palestinian civilians in Gaza are not our enemies,” Israeli military spokesman John Conricus said. “We don’t assess them as such, and we don’t target them as such. We are trying to do the right thing.”

Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Saturday that the U.S. was moving in a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a deterrence to any regional actors seeking to widen the war.

Hamas remained defiant. In a televised speech Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh said that “all the massacres” will not break the Palestinian people.

Fighting continued in the run-up to the expected offensive.

An Israeli airstrike near the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people and wounded another 80, Gaza health authorities said.