Sources at hospitals in the Gaza Strip say that since Wednesday morning some 75 Palestinians have been killed by IDF fire, including 53 in Gaza City alone. Earlier, large numbers of displaced people were documented leaving Gaza City in the shadow of the IDF ground operation in the area, even though hundreds of thousands still remain there.
Residents leave Gaza City
(Video: Reuters)
While fighting continues, IDF Arabic-language spokesman Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee announced earlier that an additional evacuation route from the city to the south would be open via Salah al-Din Street, funtil Friday at noon.
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Palestinians leave Gaza City as ground operation advances
(Photos: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP, Jack Guez / AFP)
Against the backdrop of the fighting, the UN expressed “deep concern” Wednesday that food supplies are running out in north Gaza where, it said, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians “have already experienced hunger” after Israel closed the only crossing into the area last week. At this stage hundreds of thousands of Gazans still shelter in the city, having ignored IDF warnings about nearby fighting.
“There are grave concerns about fuel and food stocks running out within days, since there are currently no direct entry points for aid into north Gaza, and new supply from south to north is becoming increasingly challenging due to growing road congestion and insecurity,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement. It added that the Zikim crossing was closed on Sept. 12, and since then aid organizations have been unable to deliver supplies to the area.
Boushra Khalidi, head of the international anti-poverty organization Oxfam, said the crossing closure may be “another strategy to force the population to move south.”
Avir Atfa, a spokesman for the World Food Programme who used the crossing before it closed, added: “There is an urgent need to open an active border point in the north (of Gaza) for essential, lifesaving humanitarian supplies.”
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Israel Katz commented on the ground operation in Gaza City on X, writing: “Yesterday, with the start of the ground maneuver and the transfer of command responsibility to the division commanders in the field, 25 terror towers were destroyed in Gaza! A huge and significant number. To remove any sniper threat above the maneuvering forces, terrorists were neutralized and terror infrastructure was destroyed. Gaza residents were required to move south for their own protection.”
Katz added: “If Hamas does not release the hostages and disarm, Gaza will be destroyed and will become a monument to Ansar and to the murderers of Hamas.”
After a major wave of strikes on Gaza overnight between Monday and Tuesday that were heard as far as central Israel and the Sharon region, thousands of Gazans left the city that faces an IDF takeover. As of Monday evening, more than 350,000 Gazans had left the “capital of Hamas” — and the security establishment estimates that as the operation progresses the pace of population evacuation from the city will accelerate.