Fleeing residents of Gaza City waved white flags past Israeli tanks reportedly shielding them from Hamas fire on Tuesday as civilians evacuated during a four-hour window Israel had given it before it stormed in.
The Israel Defense Forces posted footage of dozens of Palestinians walking and riding donkey carts from the Gaza Strip’s largest city to a “safe zone” in the south between 10am and 2pm local time.
The video shows residents walking past Israeli tanks that have surrounded the area ahead of the Jewish state’s expected ground invasion of the densely populated region to try to destroy the Hamas terror group.
Israel said the tanks were attacked by Hamas because they were helping to clear evacuation routes and the army was ultimately protecting Palestinian civilians from terrorists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Monday, “We are fighting a very brutal enemy.
“They use their civilians as human shields, and when we ask the Palestinian civilians to leave the war zone, they stop them at gunpoint.”
But some Gazans said Israeli forces also opened fire near them possibly to scare them.
The Palestinians said the Israeli army ordered them to raise their hands and wave a white flag to signal to the Israeli army that they were evacuating.
Hamas, which says 900,000 Palestinians are still taking refuge in northern Gaza, accuses the IDF of forcing evacuees to fly the flag to humiliate them.
The evacuation came a day after about 5,000 people fled Gaza City on foot in a four-hour window, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“As the road leading to the main intersection is badly damaged, it can only be reached on foot,” OCHA wrote on Facebook on Monday night.
“Entire families, including children, the elderly, and the disabled were reported walking long distances, carrying their personal belongings by hand,” the post said.
Gaza City resident Adam Fayez Zeyara posted a selfie online of himself along the route, calling the journey “The most dangerous journey of my life.
“We saw the tank from point blank range. We saw the decaying body parts. We saw death,” said a shaken resident.
Heartbreaking developments come as:
— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made some of his most direct comments yet on the end of his country’s war against Hamas, saying late Monday that Israel will secure Gaza for an “indefinite” period after it removes the terrorists from power.
But Mark Regev, a senior adviser to the PM, appeared to try to downplay his boss’ potentially incendiary comments on Tuesday during a CNN interview Tuesday.
Regev said Israel’s post-war plans did not involve “permanent occupation.”
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“There must be an Israeli security presence, but that does not mean that Israel reoccupies Gaza, that does not mean that Israel is there to govern the people of Gaza,” Netanyahu’s aide said.
“On the contrary, we are interested in creating a new framework where the people of Gaza can govern themselves, where there is international support for the reconstruction of Gaza.
“Hopefully, we can bring in countries – Arab countries too – for the post-Hamas reconstruction of Gaza,” Regev said.
— Netanyahu on Monday rejected a proposal from his key ally, President Biden, to halt the fighting to allow more aid to flow into the densely populated region, which is teetering on the brink of running out of food, medicine, fuel and water supplies, unless some sort of quid . pro quo from Hamas.
Israel’s critics have demanded such a “humanitarian pause”.
“It has been a month full of carnage, unending suffering, bloodshed, destruction, anger and despair,” UN Human Rights Commissioner Volcker Turk said in a statement on Tuesday as he traveled to the region to see the crossing Rafah from Egypt, which is the only route for humanitarian aid to the besieged region is blocked.
Netanyahu later said he might allow “a little pause.”
“Well, there will be no ceasefire, general ceasefire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu said. “As far as tactical breaks, an hour here, an hour there. We’ve had them before, I think, we’ll check the situation to allow goods, humanitarian goods to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages to leave. But I don’t think there will be a general ceasefire.”
— Israel says it has struck more than 14,000 terrorist targets in the past month.
The IDF has “destroyed more than 100 terrorist tunnels and more than 4,000 weapons, mostly inside mosques, kindergartens and residential buildings,” said IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
— Israel said its troops were attacked by Hamas fighters “emerging” from tunnels in Gaza City to fire rocket-propelled grenades at them, adding on Tuesday that it destroyed several tunnels in the residential area of Beit Hanoun in the northeastern part of the Gaza Strip.
“We are really trying to take out these tunnels as we move in and approach Gaza City,” Israeli Lt.-Col. Richard Hecht told reporters.
A Palestinian woman holds a white flag as she moves with a group of civilians from the northern Gaza Strip towards the southern tip of the 25-mile territory on Tuesday.REUTERS
– The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that the destruction in Gaza’s medical facilities has forced some doctors to perform surgeries, including amputations, without anesthesia.
– As Israel pleaded with Palestinians to leave their homes and head south, two Israeli airstrikes in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah killed 23 people on Tuesday, according to health officials controlled by Hamas.
Rescuers in Khan Younis tried to pull out a girl buried up to her waist in the rubble of a bombed-out house, killing 11 people.
“We are civilians,” said resident Ahmed Ayesh, who was rescued.
“This is the courage called Israel, they show their strength and power against civilians, babies inside, children inside, and old people,” the man raged.
-On Tuesday, 400 US citizens and their family members were allowed to enter Egypt, according to the State Department, the Jerusalem Post reported.
One hundred Egyptians and 262 Jordanians were also allowed to leave Gaza, officials said.
Palestinians evacuate a building hit by Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Sunday.AP
Although hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports have been allowed to flee to Africa since last week, nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been trapped in the narrow strip.
“It’s just a horror movie that keeps repeating itself,” said Suzan Beseiso, 31, a Palestinian-American who was able to leave Gaza for Egypt last week, from Cairo.
“No sleep. No food. No water. You keep moving from one place to another.”
— A surge in antisemitic acts is taking place in France and Germany, according to new figures released by both countries on Tuesday, with a German official calling the announcement “very painful, just two days before the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht 1938, ” referring to the Nazis’ violent attacks on Jewish homes and businesses in November 1938.
— Gaza health officials linked to Hamas said on Monday that more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by relentless Israeli airstrikes in the month after terrorists attacked Israel and killed more than 1,400 people and kidnapped about 250 others. Palestinian terrorists do not distinguish between civilians and militants in their massacres.
The WHO was the latest group to call for an end to the fighting on Tuesday.
“We urge all parties to agree to a humanitarian ceasefire and work towards lasting peace. We once again call for the immediate release of the hostages,” Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus writes at X.
“History will judge us all by what we did to end this tragedy.”
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
