At least 15 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike in central Gaza, WAFA agency says
Adds new evacuation orders in Gaza, background on humanitarian zones
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug 17 (Reuters) -At least 15 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike in the Gaza town of Zawayda, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Saturday, as Israel issued new evacuation orders, citing Hamas rocket fire nearby.
The Israeli military said it was aware of reports of 15 people killed in a Gaza airstrike and was looking into them.
Israel's military spokesperson in Arabic posted instructions on X for people in parts of central Gaza, including in Maghazi district which is near Zawayda, to evacuate to a designated humanitarian zone.
He said militants were firing rockets from those locations and that the military was preparing to act against them.
Reuters could not immediately verify whether any areas of Zawayda were among those ordered to evacuate and whether people there received the military's instructions.
On Friday, two sections in western Khan Younis within what Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone were deemed dangerous by the military, which ordered people to evacuate them saying that militants had been regularly firing rockets from there.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday's orders, which also included other areas of the enclave outside the humanitarian zones, had affected around 170,000 displaced people.
"This is one of the largest evacuation orders affecting the zone to date and it shrinks the size of the so-called 'humanitarian area' to about 41 square kilometres, or 11 per cent of the total area of the Gaza Strip," an OCHA report said.
Most of Gaza's 2.3 million population has been displaced by the 10-month-old Israeli offensive, which has laid waste to much of the enclave.
Ceasefire talks in Doha, mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, paused on Friday with negotiators to meet again next week seeking an agreement to end the fighting between Israel and Hamas and free remaining hostages.
The war was triggered on Oct. 7 when the militant Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's subsequent military campaign has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities. Israel has lost 330 soldiers in Gaza and says at least a third of the Palestinian dead are fighters.
Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Dave Graham in Zurich
Writing by Enas Alashray and Maayan Lubell
Editing by William Mallard and Frances Kerry
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