After Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists fired two rockets from central Gaza on Friday evening, the Israel Air Force struck terrorists, as well as several facilities in the Strip, that were used to store weapons, the IDF reported on Saturday afternoon.
The IAF intercepted the rockets as they were en-route to the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. According to the IDF, they were launched less than 200 feet away from an international aid warehouse.
Prior to the air force’s strikes on the weapons storage sites, the IDF engaged in numerous measures, including the issuing of evacuation orders and the use of precise munitions, to mitigate risk to civilians and the aid warehouse, the military added.
Just after 11:00 p.m. on Friday, IDF Arabic spokesperson Colonel Avichay Adraee, posted the evacuation notice on X/Twitter.
The spokesperson shared a map of the Gaza Strip, with the evacuation area in question, located southeast of Jabalya, highlighted in red.
#عاجل ‼️ الى كل سكان قطاع غزة المتواجدين في منطقة D5, C2 المحددة (منطقة جنوب شرق جباليا)هذا تحذير مسبق قبل الهجوم!⭕️تطلق المنظمات الإرهابية القذائف الصاروخية مرة اخرى من هذه المنطقة والتي تم تحذيرها عدة مرات في الماضي. ⭕️من أجل أمنكم، انتقلوا فوراً الى المآوي في مركز… pic.twitter.com/izfXlPHEys
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) December 13, 2024
“This is a warning before the attack!” Adraee wrote. “Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets from this area, which has been warned several times in the past.”
“For your safety, move immediately to the shelters in the center of Gaza City,” Adraee added.
The Saturday IDF statement condemned the rocket attack, calling it “a further example of the Hamas terrorist organization’s systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law.”
According to The Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv University-affiliated independent think tank, over 13,300 rockets have been fired from Gaza throughout the ongoing Israel-Hamas War.
The military added that it, via the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Defense Ministry unit that oversees the implementation of the government’s civilian policies in the West Bank and Gaza, would continue to “enable and facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip,” according to international law.
Later on Saturday, Reuters cited Gaza City's civil emergency service as reporting that an Israeli strike on a Gazan school sheltering displaced people killed seven and wounded 12 others. Among those reportedly killed were a woman and her baby.
Gaza's civil services, as with the Strip's health ministry, are operated by Hamas.