2023-11-07 13:02:52
Shooting towards them and bodies lying around them…the horrific journey of those fleeing from northern to southern Gaza
One of Gaza’s busiest roads has turned into a horrific path for Palestinians fleeing Israeli fighting and bombing, with civilians forced to pass Israeli tanks on foot or riding on donkey carts.
On their way south, these civilians raise their hands or wave white flags to pass Israeli tanks along the four-lane highway, according to an Associated Press report.
Some reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire on them, and others said that they passed bodies scattered along the road.
Many civilians fled with only the clothes they were wearing, while some were able to transport their families, clothes and sleeping mattresses on donkey carts.
Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip via Salah al-Din Road in Bureij on Sunday (AP)
In the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli ground forces, supported by continuous air strikes, cordoned off Gaza City, which it considers the center of Hamas’ rule. Israel also divided the strip into two halves. North and South, and sought to expel the Palestinians from the north with the advance of the forces.
Since the beginning of the war, the Israeli army has urged civilians to move south, via the Salah al-Din Road, which passes through the center of the besieged enclave, and which it said would be a safe passage.
But tens of thousands of civilians remain in the north, many of them taking refuge in hospitals or UN facilities.
Those who remain in the north say that overpopulation in the south, coupled with dwindling water and food supplies, and continuing Israeli air strikes in supposedly safe areas, are deterring them.
Some said that the fear of being betrayed during their journey south, following some of the escapees confirmed that they had been shot by Israeli soldiers, made them hesitate in making the decision to flee.
Yesterday (Monday), the spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qudra, rejected Israeli offers to move through safe corridors, describing them as “nothing but corridors of death.”
He added that the bodies had been lying on the road for days, and he called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to accompany local ambulances to recover the dead.
The Israeli army said that its forces were once attacked by Hamas when they tried to temporarily open the road for civilians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed these allegations in an interview with >, broadcast late yesterday (Monday).
“We are fighting a particularly brutal enemy,” Netanyahu said. They use civilians as human shields, and while we ask the Palestinian civilian population to leave the war zone, they prevent them at gunpoint.”
During the four-hour evacuation period on Sunday, less than 2,000 people fled, followed by regarding 5,000 on Monday, according to UN monitors. Some of them were from Gaza City and the neighboring Shati camp, and had fled on Monday following heavy Israeli bombing there the night before.
A Palestinian woman with her child trying to flee from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south via the Salah al-Din Road on Sunday (AP)
A young woman named Amal, who was part of a group of 17 people who fled the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, told the Associated Press that Israeli tanks fired near them, then soldiers ordered everyone to raise their hands and white flags before allowing them to pass.
Palestinian Nour Naji Abu Nasser (27 years old) arrived on Sunday in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. She described her journey, which lasted for hours, as “very scary.”
She explained: “They fired into the sand around us. They wanted to scare us,” she said, adding that she saw bodies lying along the road outside Gaza City.
The war, which has been ongoing for 4 weeks, has led to the displacement of regarding 1.5 million people across Gaza, according to United Nations figures.
The Israeli military said thousands responded to its orders to move south, but UN humanitarian monitors said thousands of evacuees returned to their homes in the north, due to ongoing bombardment across Gaza and a shortage of shelters in the south.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says that more than 530,000 people are taking shelter in its facilities in southern Gaza, and it is now unable to accommodate the new arrivals. The agency said that many of the displaced people resorted to sleeping on the streets near United Nations shelters.
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