Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians face a deepening struggle for food, water and safety as they brace for a looming invasion a week after Hamas militants launched a deadly assault on Israel.
While hundreds of thousands seek to heed Israel’s order to evacuate the north, others huddled at hospitals there.
Israeli forces, supported by a growing deployment of US warships in the region, have positioned themselves along Gaza’s border and drilled for what Israel said will be a broad campaign to dismantle the militant group. A week of blistering air strikes have demolished entire neighbourhoods but failed to stem militant rocket fire into Israel.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 2,329 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting erupted, more than in the 2014 Gaza war, which lasted over six weeks. That makes this the deadliest of the five Gaza wars for both sides.
More than 1,300 Israelis have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians killed in Hamas’s initial assault on October 7. This is the deadliest war for Israel since the 1973 conflict with Egypt and Syria.
Israel has dropped leaflets over Gaza City in the north and renewed warnings on social media, ordering more than one million Palestinians – almost half the territory’s population – to move south.
The military says it is trying to clear civilians ahead of a major campaign against Hamas militants in the north, including in what it said are underground hideouts in Gaza City. Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.
The UN and aid groups say such a rapid exodus, along with Israel’s complete siege of the 25-mile coastal territory, will cause untold human suffering.
The World Health Organisation said the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals, including newborns in incubators and people in intensive care.
Gaza’s hospitals are expected to run out of fuel for emergency generators within two days, according to the UN, which said that would endanger the lives of thousands of patients.
Gaza was already in a humanitarian crisis due to a growing shortage of water and medical supplies caused by the Israeli siege, which has also forced electrical plants to shut down without fuel. With some bakeries closing, residents complained of being unable to buy bread for their children.
In Gaza City, Haifa Khamis al-Shurafa crowded into a car with six family members, fleeing to the south in the darkness. “We don’t deserve this,” she said. “We didn’t kill anyone.”
The Israeli military said “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians have heeded the warning and headed south. It gave Palestinians a six-hour window that ended on Saturday afternoon to travel safely within Gaza along two main routes, but has not set a firm deadline for the evacuation.
The US has been trying to broker a deal to reopen Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza to allow foreigners to leave and humanitarian aid amassed on the Egyptian side to be brought in. The crossing was closed because of air strikes early in the war.
Meanwhile, hundreds of relatives of the estimated 150 people captured by Hamas in Israel and taken to Gaza gathered outside the Israeli Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, demanding their release.
“This is my cry out to the world: Please help bring my family, my wife and three kids,” said Avihai Brodtz of Kfar Azza. Many expressed anger towards the government, saying they still have no information about their loved ones.
In a televised address on Saturday night, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, accused Hamas of trying to use civilians as human shields.
“We are going to attack Gaza City very broadly soon,” he said, without giving a timetable for the attack.
When asked at a press briefing whether Israel will treat civilians who stay in the north as combatants, Lt Col Richard Hecht, another army spokesman, said: “That’s why we’ve encouraged people not involved with Hamas to move south.”
The military said on Sunday that an air strike in southern Gaza had killed a Hamas commander blamed for the killings at Nirim, one of several communities Hamas had attacked in southern Israel. Israel said it struck more than 100 military targets overnight, including command centres and rocket launchers.
Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza. Israelis living near the Gaza border, including residents of the town of Sderot, continue to be evacuated.
Militants in Gaza have fired more than 5,500 rockets since the hostilities erupted, many reaching deep into Israel, as Israeli warplanes pound Gaza.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said late on Saturday that Washington is moving a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean, in a show of force meant to deter any allies of Hamas, such as Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, from seeking to widen the war.
Hamas remained defiant. In a televised speech on Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, a top official, said “all the massacres” will not break the Palestinian people.
An Israeli air strike near the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people and wounded another 80, Gaza health authorities said, and most of the victims were women and children, the authorities said.
At Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, a crowd of men, women and children that medical officials estimated at 35,000 crammed into the lobby and hallways and under the trees on the hospital grounds, hoping the facility will be spared in the coming attack.
“People think this is the only safe space after their homes were destroyed and they were forced to flee,” said Dr Medhat Abbas, a Health Ministry official.
The Israeli military’s evacuation order demands the territory’s entire population cram into the southern half of Gaza as Israel continues strikes, including in the south. The Hamas communications office said Israel has destroyed more than 7,000 housing units so far.
Rami Swailem said he and at least five families in his building decided to stay put in his apartment near Gaza City.
“We are rooted in our lands,” he said. “We prefer to die in dignity and face our destiny.”
