Palestinians began a mass exodus from northern Gaza after Israel’s military told some one million people to evacuate toward the southern part of the besieged territory.
The unprecedented order comes ahead of an expected ground invasion against the ruling Hamas militant group.
The UN has warned that so many people fleeing en masse – almost half of Gaza’s total population – would be calamitous.
Hamas, which staged a shocking and brutal attack on Israel nearly a week ago and has fired thousands of rockets since, dismissed the evacuation order as a ploy and called on people to stay in their homes.
The evacuation order, which applies to Gaza City, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, sparked widespread panic among civilians and aid workers already running from Israeli air strikes and contending with a total siege of Gaza.
Israel has cut off all food, water and supplies and caused a territory-wide blackout.
Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza City, said: “Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if you’ll make it, if you’re going to live.”
The war has already claimed more than 3,000 lives on both sides and sent tensions soaring across the region.
Israel has also traded fire in recent days with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, sparking fears of an ever wider conflict, although that frontier is currently calm.
Weekly Muslim prayers brought protests across the Middle East, and tensions ran high in Jerusalem’s Old City. The Islamic endowment that manages a flashpoint holy site in the city, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, said Israeli authorities barred all Palestinian men under the age of 50 from entering.
Israel has bombarded Gaza round-the-clock since Hamas’ attack, in which its fighters massacred hundreds in southern Israel and snatched some 150 people to be held in Gaza as hostages.
Hamas said Israel’s air strikes killed 13 of the hostages in the past day. It said the dead included foreigners, but did not give their nationalities.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari denied that claim, telling Al-Jazeera Arabic that “we have our own information and do not believe the lies of Hamas”.
Israel said Thursday it would allow no supplies into Gaza until Hamas frees the hostages.
The military urged civilians in Gaza’s north to move south – an order that the UN said affects 1.1 million people.
If carried out, that would mean the territory’s entire population cramming into roughly the southern half of the strip, which is only 25 miles long, even as Israeli strikes continued to hammer areas across southern Gaza on Friday.
Israel said it needed to target Hamas’ military infrastructure, much of which is buried deep underground.
Another spokesperson, Jonathan Conricus, said the military would take “extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians” and that residents would be allowed to return when the war is over.
Hamas militants operate in civilian areas, where Israel has long accused them of using Palestinians as human shields.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said at a news conference with US defence secretary Lloyd Austin: “The camouflage of the terrorists is the civil population.
“Therefore, we need to separate them. So, those who want to save their life: please go south.”
But UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said it would be impossible to stage such an evacuation without “devastating humanitarian consequences”.
He called on Israel to rescind any such orders, saying they could “transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation”.
Hamas called on Palestinians to stay in their homes, saying Israel “is trying to create confusion” among the population. It urged Palestinians to ignore what it called “psychological warfare.”
Many Palestinians in Gaza still struggled with indecision, not knowing whether to leave or stay.
Gaza City resident Khaled Abu Sultan at first didn’t believe the evacuation order was real, and now is not sure whether to evacuate his family to the south.
“We don’t know if there are safe areas there,” he said. “We don’t know anything.”
Another family contacted friends and relatives in southern Gaza seeking shelter, but then changed their minds. Many expressed concern they would not be able to return, or be gradually displaced to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
More than half of the Palestinians in Gaza are the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, when hundreds of thousands fled or were expelled from what is now Israel.
For many, the mass evacuation order dredged up fears of a second expulsion. Already, at least 423,000 people – nearly one in five Gazans – have been forced from their homes by Israeli air strikes, the UN said on Thursday.
Gaza’s health ministry said it was impossible to evacuate the many wounded from hospitals — already struggling with high numbers of dead and injured. “We cannot evacuate hospitals and leave the wounded and sick to die,” spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said.
Ms Farsakh, of the Palestinian Red Crescent, said some medics were refusing to leave and abandon patients and were instead calling colleagues to say goodbye.
“What will happen to our patients?” she asked. “We have wounded, we have elderly, we have children who are in hospitals.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) also said it would not evacuate its schools, where hundreds of thousands have taken shelter. But it relocated its headquarters to southern Gaza, according to spokesperson Juliette Touma.
The evacuation order was taken as a further signal of an already expected Israeli ground offensive, though no such decision has been announced.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to “crush” Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.
His government is under intense public pressure to topple the group rather than merely bottle it up in Gaza as it has for years.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Israel has the right to defend itself after the brutal Hamas attack but warned against hurting civilians in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with leaders of ex-Soviet nations in Kyrgyzstan, Mr Putin said that “Israel faced an attack that was unprecedented not only in its scale, but also its cruelty”.
He charged that Israel is responding to the attack “on a large scale also using cruel methods,” adding that “Israel certainly has the right to ensure its security”.
Mr Putin warned against an onslaught on Gaza, saying it would be unacceptable. He noted that “not all people there support Hamas”.
He emphasised that Russia has had longtime friendly ties with both Israel and the Palestinians and would be ready to help mediate a settlement.
The Gaza health ministry said 1,799 people have been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women.
Hamas’ assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including 247 soldiers.
Israel says roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were killed inside Israel, and that hundreds of the dead in Gaza are Hamas members.
