Israel strikes Gaza after evacuation orders as ceasefire violations mount

The evacuation orders came first. Then, within hours, the bombs fell on the same neighborhoods where families had been told to leave. On Thursday, the Israeli military issued displacement warnings for four separate areas across Gaza, then struck those locations with airstrikes that killed at least two people, according to medical sources in the territory.

The pattern has become familiar enough to document: a warning, a scramble, an attack. Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza City described what this means in practice. When an evacuation order arrives, families do not simply pack and move to safety. They abandon whatever shelter they have managed to secure—often in darkness, often in panic—because there is nowhere else to go. Many end up on the streets. A strike on Gaza City that Thursday ignited a massive fire that civil defence crews were still fighting to extinguish hours later.

The destruction was scattered across the territory's most densely populated areas. Homes were destroyed in the Bureij and Jabalia refugee camps. Strikes hit the Zeitoun and Tal al-Hawa neighborhoods of Gaza City. In Zeitoun, a separate strike on a building wounded several people who were brought to al-Ahli Hospital. These were not isolated incidents but part of what the correspondent called a particularly alarming pattern: warnings followed immediately by attacks on the very places people had been ordered to evacuate.

These airstrikes represent the latest breach of what is officially called a ceasefire—a US-brokered agreement that took effect last year. Since October 2025, more than 1,185 Palestinians have been killed in violations of that arrangement. The broader toll from what Israeli officials have described as a war on Gaza stands at more than 73,000 Palestinian deaths according to local health authorities. The ceasefire, in other words, has not stopped the killing.

The humanitarian collapse continues beneath the headlines. A new analysis by UN agencies found that 1.4 million people—roughly 67 percent of Gaza's entire population—are living with what researchers classify as crisis-level or worse acute food insecurity. That is a slight improvement from 1.6 million at the end of the previous year, but the word improvement obscures the reality. Ross Smith, who directs emergency preparedness for the UN World Food Programme, was direct about what the numbers mean: "It is still a critical, desperate humanitarian situation." He told Al Jazeera that Gaza is not fine, that the territory requires continued humanitarian access, continued funding, and continued international attention. Without all three, people will continue to suffer.

The international response has been fragmented. Egypt's foreign minister pressed the US Secretary of State on Thursday to accelerate deployment of an International Stabilization Force in Gaza, a key component of the broader American plan for the territory. Morocco has announced it will send security personnel and establish a field hospital. Moroccan officers have already visited Gaza to prepare for deployment. But the overall plan has stalled. Meanwhile, the UK's newly formed government demanded that Israel lift restrictions on humanitarian aid, noting that Gaza faces crisis-level food insecurity and that Israeli aid restrictions are driving disease, water scarcity, and the collapse of health services. The statement carried an implicit warning: averting famine should not be the measure of success.