Palestinians yesterday scrambled to flee northern Gaza after the Israeli military ordered nearly half the population to evacuate south and carried out limited ground forays ahead of an expected land offensive a week after Hamas’ bloody, wide-ranging attack into Israel.
Israel renewed calls on social media and in leaflets dropped from the air for about 1 million Gaza residents to move south, while Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.
The UN and aid groups have said that such a rapid exodus would cause untold human suffering, with hospital patients and others unable to relocate.
Photo: AFP
Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with possessions crowded a main road heading away from Gaza City as Israeli airstrikes continued to hammer the 40km long territory, where supplies of food, fuel and drinking water were running low because of a complete Israeli siege.
Egyptian officials said the Rafah Border Crossing would open later yesterday for the first time in days to allow foreigners out.
Israel said that Palestinians could travel within Gaza without being harmed along two main routes from 10am to 4pm.
The Israeli military said “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians had already heeded the warning and headed south, but some live up to 20km away, and roads demolished by airstrikes and a fuel shortage hindered their journeys.
Thousands of people crammed into a UN-run school-turned-shelter in Deir al-Balah, a farming town south of the evacuation zone. Many slept outside on the ground.
“I came here with my children... We don’t have a mattress, or clothes,” said 63-year-old Howeida al-Zaaneen from the town of Beit Hanoun. “I want to go back to my home, even if it is destroyed.”
The military said its troops conducted temporary raids into Gaza to battle militants and hunted for traces of about 150 people who were abducted during Hamas’ assault on southern Israel on Saturday last week.
Hamas said Israel’s airstrikes had killed 13 hostages, including foreigners, but did not provide their nationalities.
The military denied the claim.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza yesterday said that more than 2,200 people have been killed in the territory, including 724 children and 458 women.
The Hamas assault killed more than 1,300 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, and about 1,500 Hamas militants were killed during the fighting, the Israeli government said.
Fearing a mass exodus of Palestinians, Egyptian authorities erected “temporary” blast walls on Egypt’s side of the heavily guarded Rafah crossing, which has been closed for days because of Israeli airstrikes, two Egyptian officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Raids into Gaza on Friday were the first acknowledgment that Israeli troops had entered the territory since the military began its round-the-clock bombardment in retaliation for the Hamas massacre.
The military said the ground troops left after conducting the raids.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Saudi Arabian Minister of Foreign Affairs Faisal bin Farhan in Riyadh yesterday, and both called for Israel to protect civilians in Gaza.
“As Israel pursues its legitimate right to defend its people and to trying to ensure that this never happens again, it is vitally important that all of us look out for civilians, and we’re working together to do exactly that,” Blinken said.
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