Deir-Al-Balah (Gaza Strip): Palestinians scrambled to flee northern Gaza on Saturday 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 some 1 million Gaza residents to move south, while Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.
The UN and aid groups have said such a rapid exodus would cause untold human suffering, with hospital patients and others unable to relocate.
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 small, besieged territory, where supplies of food, fuel and drinking water were running low because of a complete Israeli siege.
Egyptian officials said the southern Rafah crossing would open later Saturday for the first time in days to allow foreigners out.
Israel said Palestinians could travel along two main routes without being harmed from 10 am to 4 pm local time.
It that “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians had already headed south. But some live up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, and many roads were demolished by airstrikes and fuel was running short.
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 without mattresses, or in chairs pulled from classrooms.
“I came here with my children. We slept on the ground. We don’t have a mattress, or clothes,” Howeida al-Zaaneen, 63, who is from the northern town of Beit Hanoun, said. “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 some 150 people — including men, women and children — who were abducted during Hamas’ shocking October 7 assault on southern Israel.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that over 2,200 people have been killed in the territory, including 724 children and 458 women.
The Hamas assault killed more than 1,300 Israelis, most of them civilians, and roughly 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 on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Raids into Gaza on Friday were the first indication that Israeli troops had entered the territory since the military began its round-the-clock bombardment in retaliation for the Hamas massacre. Palestinian militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel since the fighting erupted.
The military said the ground troops left after conducting the raids.
Israel has called up some 360,000 reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza, but no decision has been announced on whether to launch a ground offensive.
An assault into densely populated Gaza would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal house-to-house fighting.
“We will destroy Hamas,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Friday night.
Hamas said Israel’s airstrikes killed 13 hostages, including foreigners. It did not provide their nationalities. The military denied the claim. Hamas and other Palestinian militants hope to trade the hostages for thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
In Israel, residents stunned by the Hamas rampage faced the fright of continual rocket fire out of Gaza.
The Israeli public is overwhelmingly in favor of a military offensive, and TV news broadcasts focus heavily on the aftermath of the Hamas attack and make scarce mention of the unfolding crisis in Gaza.
In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry says 53 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, including 16 on Friday. The UN says attacks by Israeli settlers have surged there since the Hamas assault.
