Cairo/Gaza (Reuters)-Hundreds of thousands of Gaza inhabitants in fleeing sought shelter on Thursday in one of the greatest mass displacements of the war, while Israeli forces advanced on the ruins of the city of Rafah, part of a newly named “safety zone” they intend to take.
One day after declaring their intention to capture large areas of the crowded enclave, Israeli forces invaded the city in the southern end of Gaza, which served as the last refuge for people who fled from other areas for much of the war.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that at least 97 people have died in Israeli attacks in the last 24 hours, including at least 20 dead in an air strike at dawn in Shejaia, a suburb of the city of Gaza in the north.
Rafah “no longer exists, it is being swept,” he told Reuters, through a message app, a father of seven children among the hundreds of thousands of people who fled from Rafah to neighboring Khan Youis.
“They are overthrowing what is left of homes and properties,” said the man who did not want to be identified for fear of repercussions.
The attack on capturing Rafah is a great climbing in war, which Israel restarted last month after effectively abandoning a ceasefire in force since January.
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In Shejaia, in the north, one of the districts where Israel ordered the population to leave the place, hundreds of residents came out on Thursday, some carrying their belongings as they walked, others in donkey and bicycle or vans.
“I want to die. May they kill us and set us free from this life. We are not living, we are dead,” said Umm Aed Bardaa.
In Khan Younis, where several people were killed by an attack, Adel Abu Fakher was checking the damage to his tent: “There is nothing left for us. We are being killed while we slept,” he said.
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Israel has not defined its long -term goals for the safety zone that your troops are taking now.
The inhabitants of Gaza who had returned to the houses in the ruins during the ceasefire now received orders to escape the communities at the north and southern ends of the track.
They fear that Israel’s intention is to depove these areas indefinitely, leaving many hundreds of thousands of permanently homeless people, while Israel holds some of Gaza’s last agricultural lands and critical water infrastructure.
