(Gaza) Thousands of Palestinians continue to flee through the devastated streets of Gaza City, seeking refuge further south after an injunction from Israel, which is preparing for a ground offensive to wipe out Hamas, a week after the bloody attack launched by the Palestinian Islamist movement.
WHAT THERE IS TO KNOW
- Hamas launched a surprise military offensive towards Israel on October 7;
- The Israeli army has since responded with airstrikes on the Gaza Strip;
- An Israeli ground offensive is expected on Palestinian territory;
- Israel on Friday ordered the evacuation of all civilians from Gaza within 24 hours;
- Hamas threatens to execute civilian hostages in response to Israeli raids on Gaza;
- Around 150 people are believed to be detained by Hamas, “including foreigners”;
- The war left nearly 3,500 dead on both sides, according to official reports.
The Israeli army on Saturday recommended to the population of Gaza City “not to delay” in evacuating their homes and moving towards the south of the territory, while the roads are already congested in the north.
There is a “window from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.” on Saturday, army spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters, without specifying a deadline. “We know this is going to take time, but we recommend people not to wait,” he added
The army, which responded with intensive strikes on the Gaza Strip, announced on Saturday that it had “liquidated” a senior Hamas military official, on the seventh day of the war, which has already left thousands dead. This official, Mourad Abou Mourad, is according to her “responsible for a large part of the murderous offensive” against Israel.
The army had announced the day before that it had carried out ground incursions into the Palestinian territory where 5,540 houses “were destroyed” according to the UN.
Nearly 3,750 other homes were so damaged that they are uninhabitable, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) added on Saturday.
“This is only the beginning” of Israeli operations in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Friday.
The Israeli army confirmed on Saturday that it had identified “more than 120 civilians” held captive in Gaza, among around 150 hostages kidnapped by Hamas which threatened to execute them. Hundreds of people remain missing, and bodies are still being identified.
“We will probably evolve into other significant combat operations,” insisted an Israeli army spokesperson, Jonathan Conricus.
At least 1,300 Israelis, most of them civilians, have been killed since the attack, which has traumatized Israel where it has been compared to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
About 2,215 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 724 children, according to local authorities, died in the Gaza Strip, a small, impoverished and siege territory wedged between Israel and Egypt.
PHOTO IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA, REUTERS
Palestinians carry a man injured during Israeli strikes in Khan Younes, in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 14.
Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, announced Friday that 13 hostages, “including foreigners”, had been killed in Israeli strikes.
The Islamist group, which Israel has sworn to “annihilate”, had already announced the death of four hostages in the bombings.
“Humanitarian disaster”
The Israeli army welcomed on Saturday a “significant movement” of Gazan civilians evacuating to the South, but accused Hamas of trying to block these departures.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had accused Hamas the day before of using the population as a “shield”.
The Islamist movement rejected this call for evacuation, which concerns around 1.1 million inhabitants, out of a total of 2.4 million.
Calls are increasing across the world to avoid a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
“Even wars have rules,” recalled UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, calling for “immediate” humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip.
He described a “health system on the brink of collapse” and “overflowing morgues”.
PHOTO HATEM MOUSSA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Palestinians took refuge in a UN-run school in the Nuiserat refugee camp on October 14.
US President Joe Biden assured that “the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza was “a priority”, with several NGOs calling for the opening of humanitarian corridors.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that a possible ground assault would lead to “absolutely unacceptable civilian casualties”.
The evacuation of Gazan civilians requested by Israel is “totally impossible to implement”, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, also worried on Saturday.
Saudi Arabia, which expressed “its categorical rejection of calls for forced displacement” and condemned “the continued bombing of defenseless civilians”, announced on Saturday that it was suspending discussions on possible normalization with Israel.
Tension is also high on the northern border of the country where the Israeli army announced in the morning that it had killed “several terrorists” who were trying to infiltrate from Lebanon.
During the night, she said she had struck a Hezbollah target in southern Lebanon, in response to an aerial “infiltration” and firing on one of its drones.
Pro-Iranian Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, said on Friday it was “fully prepared” to intervene against Israel “at the right moment”.
A Reuters video journalist was killed and six other journalists from AFP, Reuters and Al-Jazeera injured in bombings in southern Lebanon on Friday.
PHOTO HASSAN AMMAR, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A car carrying journalists was hit by Israeli shelling in the border village of Alma el-Shaab with Israel, in southern Lebanon, on October 13.
In the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, at least 16 Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli forces during rallies in solidarity with the Gaza Strip.
Thousands of people also demonstrated on Friday in Beirut, Iraq, Iran, Jordan and Bahrain in support of the Palestinians.
At dawn on October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel in vehicles and by air from Gaza.
They killed more than a thousand civilians, sowing terror under a barrage of rockets during this attack on a scale not seen since the creation of Israel in 1948. Around 270 people, according to the authorities, were killed at a music festival.
Yossi Landau, who has worked for 33 years for the NGO Zaka, specializing in the search for bodies, witnessed a horror scene in Beeri, a town where around a hundred people were killed. He saw a woman, her stomach “torn, where there was a baby, still connected by the cord, stabbed”.
After the attack, the Israeli army claimed to have recovered the bodies of 1,500 Palestinian fighters.
Flee to the South or stay?
The Israeli army, which is shelling the Gaza Strip in response, called on all civilians in the Gaza Strip to “evacuate their homes to the South, for their own safety”.
By the thousands, carrying their backpacks, they flee by all means, on foot, piled up on trailers, carts, on motorbikes, by car, through streets strewn with rubble, lined with ruined buildings.
PHOTO HATEM MOUSSA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Palestinians flee northern Gaza after the Israeli army issued an unprecedented evacuation warning on October 13.
Here, a child holds his pillow tightly in his hand. There, a woman gathered everything she could save into a bag slung over her shoulder.
Leaflets in Arabic, dropped by Israeli drones, call on residents to leave their homes “immediately”.
The Gaza Strip, a territory of 362 square kilometers, has been subject to an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since Hamas took power there. Egypt controls its only opening to the world, the Rafah crossing point, which is currently closed.
Subjected to a “complete siege” since October 9, the enclave is now deprived of water, electricity and food supplies, cut off by Israel. And the sound of explosions is incessant.
“How long will we live under bombs with death everywhere? », Says Oum Hossam, 29 years old, her cheeks covered with tears, who is seeking refuge with her four children after the destruction of her house.
Other residents refuse to leave, for lack of means or not wanting to give in: “The enemy wants to terrorize us and force us into exile, but we will resist,” says one of them, Abou Azzam.
More than 423,000 Palestinians have already left their homes, according to the UN.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas likened such a “displacement” to a “second Nakba” (“Catastrophe” in Arabic), the name given to the flight of some 760,000 Palestinians at the creation of the State of Israel. .