GAZA/JERUSALEM – Thousands of Palestinians fled the north of the Gaza Strip on Saturday from the path of an expected Israeli ground assault, while Israel pounded the area with more air strikes and said it would keep two roads open to let people escape.
Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas militant group that controls Gaza in retaliation for a rampage by fighters, who stormed through Israeli towns a week ago, gunning civilians down and making off with scores of hostages. Some 1,300 people were killed in the worst attack on civilians in Israel’s history.
Israeli forces have since put the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, under a total siege and bombarded it with unprecedented air strikes.
Gaza authorities say more than 2,200 people have been killed, a quarter of them children, and nearly 10,000 wounded.
Israel had given the entire population of the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which includes the enclave’s biggest settlement Gaza City, until Saturday morning to move south. As that deadline approached it said it would guarantee the safety of Palestinians fleeing on two main roads until 4:00 pm. (1300 GMT).
Troops were massing around the Gaza Strip, “getting ready for the next stage of operations,” military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said.
Hamas has told people not to leave and says the roads out are unsafe. It says dozens of people had been killed in strikes on cars and trucks carrying refugees Friday, which Reuters could not independently verify.
Israel says Hamas is preventing people from leaving to use them as human shields, which Hamas denies.
In Gaza City’s Tel Al-Hawa neighbourhood, in the area Israel ordered evacuated, warplanes bombed a residential area during the night hitting several houses, according to residents who took refuge at the nearby Al Quds hospital and planned to flee south in the morning.
“We lived a night of horror. Israel punished us for not wanting to leave our home. Is there brutality worse than this?” a father of three said by telephone from the hospital, declining to give his name for fear of reprisals.
“I was never going to leave, I prefer to die and not leave, but I can’t see my wife and children die before my eyes. We are helpless.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had received an Israeli order to evacuate the hospital by 4:00 pm, but would not do so because it had a humanitarian duty to keep providing services to the sick and wounded.
In Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israeli planes struck a four-storey building overnight, neighbours rushed to rescue people.
“Martyrs are stuck under the rubble and until now neither us nor the medics nor civil defence were able to take them out,” said neighbour Mohammad Sadeq.
In video seen by Reuters, a Gaza journalist accompanied an ambulance crew searching for survivors of a nighttime air strike.
A paramedic could be seen walking into an alley lit by a headlamp when a huge flash from another strike burst in front of him. Medics raced into ambulances and sped off as planes roared above. One injured medic screamed: “My eyes! My eyes!”
The attacks on Israel have plunged the nation into deep grief and galvanised it for war, with hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilised within days.
Families of the kidnapped Israelis are terrified for their safety. Avichai Brodetz, a farmer from Kibbutz Kfar Aza whose wife and three children were taken captive to Gaza, set up a camp outside the Israeli army headquarters to focus attention on their plight.
“The first thing that needs to happen is the release of the women and children,” he told reporters.
“I don’t want to be political, I don’t want to stand here with you. I love my friends and my home and my kibbutz. I hope we can return there and you’ll never see me again.”
Hamas’s armed wing said nine captives including four foreigners had been killed overnight due to Israeli air strikes. It has previously threatened to kill one hostage for every building Israel strikes without warning.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza failed to halt Hamas missile strikes deep into Israeli cities. Air raid sirens wailed in central Israel on Saturday and rockets smashed into a greenhouse in Ashkelon and wounded four people at a kibbutz.
The only route out of Gaza not under Israeli control is a checkpoint with Egypt at Rafah. Egypt officially says its side is open, but traffic has been halted for days because of Israeli strikes.
Egyptian security sources said the Egyptian side is being reinforced and Cairo has no intention of accepting a mass influx of refugees.
A senior US State Department official said the United States was working with Egyptian, Israeli and Qatari officials to open the crossing on Saturday to let some people out, and had been in touch with Palestinian-Americans who want to leave Gaza.
Countries and aid agencies have sent supplies to Egypt but have so far been unable to bring them into Gaza. Israel says nothing can enter through Rafah without its coordination.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most crowded areas in the world, and Israel’s evacuation order for the northern half meant those fleeing south were forced to shelter with relatives and friends, in schools or in hastily rented apartments.
Israel says the order is a humanitarian gesture to protect residents from harm while it roots out Hamas fighters entrenched in Gaza City.
The United Nations says so many people cannot be safely moved inside the besieged enclave without causing a humanitarian disaster.
Hamas has vowed to fight until the last drop of blood, and says the order to leave the north of the enclave is a trick to force residents to give up their homes. Gaza City mosques have blared calls telling people to stay.
The Israeli military said on Friday tank-backed troops had mounted raids to hit Palestinian rocket crews and gather information on the location of hostages, the first official account of ground troops in Gaza since the crisis began.
The United Nations estimated that tens of thousands of Palestinians headed south from northern Gaza after the Israeli order on Friday, adding to 400,000 Gazans already displaced earlier in the week.
“We need immediate humanitarian access throughout Gaza, so that we can get fuel, food and water to everyone in need,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Friday.
“Even wars have rules.”
The United States has firmly backed its ally Israel, but has called on it to protect civilians.
“The overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas and Hamas’s appalling attacks,” President Joe Biden said on Friday. “And they’re suffering as a result as well.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on a lightning tour of the Middle East, met Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister in Riyadh and was due to travel to the United Arab Emirates.
