As Israel continued its intensified shelling and ground operations in the Palestinian territory, an Israeli airstrike on Monday killed a journalist for Al Jazeera, while the military issued new orders to evacuate portions of northern Gaza.

After negotiations with the Palestinian militant group Hamas failed to extend a ceasefire, Israel resumed heavy airstrikes over Gaza last Tuesday, followed by ground operations.

Israeli military director Avichay Adraee warned of “an early warning before a strike” in the northern region of Jabalia on Monday night.

“Terrorist groups are returning to populated areas and launching rockets from them once more… Following similar warnings for the northern cities of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, Adraee posted on X, “For your safety, head south towards the known shelters immediately.”

Earlier, Gaza’s civil defence organisation said that Hussam Shabat, an Al Jazeera employee, was killed by an Israeli drone attack near a Beit Lahia petrol station on Monday afternoon.

The agency’s spokesperson, Mahmud Bassal, reported that over ten vehicles, including Shabat’s, had been the target of airstrikes in different regions of Gaza.

The Qatari broadcaster announced on its live Arabic channel that “Hussam Shabat, a journalist working with Al Jazeera Mubasher, was martyred in an Israeli strike targeting his car in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Palestinians gathered around the car, which had an Al Jazeera sticker on its windscreen, according to AFPTV footage from the Beit Lahia incident. There was a body on the ground close by.

In October, Israel’s military charged Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists of being militants, a charge he rejected, according to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Hundreds of people prayed over Shabat’s body, which was still wearing a press flak jacket, at his funeral, which was conducted at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia.

In tears, family members and coworkers carried the body on a stretcher through streets lined with tents used as shelters by displaced Gazans.

According to the civil defence organisation, Muhammad Mansour, a journalist for Palestine Today TV, which is associated with Islamic Jihad, was murdered in a separate airstrike in the southern part of Gaza.

“A crime added to the record of Israeli terrorism” is how the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate described Shabat and Mansour’s deaths in a statement.

More than 206 journalists and media professionals have been dead since the war began, it added, after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

“Imagine this is your son.”

According to Israeli statistics, the October 7 strike killed 1,218 persons, primarily civilians, whereas the health ministry of the Hamas-run area in Gaza reports that Israel’s retaliation campaign has killed at least 50,082 people, largely civilians.

Israel started bombardment on March 18, killing 730 people, including 57 in the last 24 hours, the health ministry reported Monday.

251 captives were also taken by militants on October 7, 58 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 that the Israeli military claims are dead.

The armed wing of Hamas published a video on Monday in which two Israeli hostages, identified by AFP as Yosef Haim Ohana and Elkana Bohbot, discuss the dangers they have seen since the return of intensive Israeli strikes.

In a statement following the broadcast of the film, Bohbot’s family urged US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ensure the release of the remaining prisoners.

“Imagine this is your son, the father of your grandchild, waiting to see daylight, hearing (Israeli army) bombs, and living in constant fear for his life,” the statement continued, adding that “we want Elkana alive at home and the return of everyone” 

– Civilians ‘trapped’ – 

Israel’s military reported that it stopped three “projectiles” that were fired from the Gaza Strip Monday night. Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, and Hamas both claimed to have fired rockets against Israel.

Additionally, the military claimed to have intercepted the sixth missile fired from Yemen since hostilities in Gaza resumed.

Later, the Huthis took responsibility for two rockets and declared their intention to “target the occupying entity’s heartland until the aggression stops and the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted.”

Twelve US airstrikes “in the last few hours” were reported in northwest Yemen by the Huthi news outlet Saba late Monday.

According to the outlet, which cited the local Ministry of Health, a US airstrike on Alrasoul Alaazam Hospital injured two individuals.

Meanwhile, “thousands of civilians” were “trapped under intense Israeli shelling” in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, according to a statement released Monday by the city’s council.

It further stated that the neighborhood’s health care system had “entirely collapsed” and that all contact had been cut off.

In an effort to “dismantle terrorist infrastructure and eliminate” terrorists in Tal al-Sultan, the military claimed to have surrounded the area on Sunday.

Egypt was outraged when the defence ministry announced the establishment of an administration devoted to the “voluntary departure of Gaza residents to a third country.”

The foreign ministry published a statement on X expressing “its strong condemnation” of the establishment of this body. Egypt shares borders with Israel and Gaza.