CAIRO: Israeli forces issued new evacuation orders in the north of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and carried out military strikes which Palestinian medics and media said had killed at least 35 people since Monday night.

An airstrike late on Monday damaged two houses in the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, killing at least 20 people, the Palestinian official news agency WAFA and Hamas media said. Ten were killed in central areas of the Palestinian enclave - six in separate airstrikes on Gaza City and the town of Deir Al-Balah, and four in the town of Al-Zawayda around midnight on Monday, medics and health officials said.

At least five others were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia north of Gaza City, medics said later on Tuesday. The Israeli military said, without giving details, that its forces had “eliminated terrorists” in the central Gaza Strip and Jabalia area. Israeli troops had also located weapons and explosives over the past day in the southern Rafah area, where “terrorist infrastructure sites” had been eliminated, it said.

Later on Tuesday, Israeli planes dropped leaflets over Beit Lahiya ordering residents who have not yet left their homes and shelters housing displaced families to quit the town completely.