The Israeli military has ordered more residents to evacuate large parts of northern Gaza, where battles between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters are raging months after Israel claimed it had defeated Hamas there.

In Rafah, which borders Egypt in the south, Palestinian residents said they could see smoke billowing above the city’s eastern districts amid the sound of explosions.

The UN says at least 450,000 Palestinians have been driven out of Rafah over the past week as Israeli tanks and troops push deeper in their long-feared ground invasion of what was the last refuge of Palestinian civilians until Israel said it would invade to destroy all remaining Palestinian resistance.

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