Streams of people fleeing the city with belongings have jammed roads leading out, on foot and in cars, trucks and donkey carts in a confused evacuation under continued Israeli bombardment.
By Wafaa Shurafa, Sarah El Deeb and Lee Keath, Associated PressDisplaced Palestinians arrive in central Gaza after fleeing from the southern Gaza city of Rafah in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, May 7, 2024. The Israeli army has ordered tens of thousands of people to evacuate Rafah as it conducts a ground operation there.
As the possibility of a full-scale invasion looms, Gaza’s overcrowded southernmost city has been thrown into panic and chaos by Israel’s seizure of the nearby border crossing with Egypt. Israel on Monday issued evacuation orders for eastern parts of the city, home to some 100,000. It then sent tanks to seize the nearby Rafah crossing with Egypt, shutting it down. At the same time, it has intensified bombardment around the city.
Tent camps in some parts of Rafah have vanished, springing up again further north along main roads. New camps have filled streets, cemeteries and the beach in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, 10 miles north, as people flowed in, said Ghada Alhaddad, who works there with the aid group Oxfam, speaking to a briefing by several humanitarian workers.
The Israeli military told those evacuating to go to a “humanitarian zone” it declared in Muwasi, a nearby rural area on the Mediterranean coast. The zone is already packed with some 450,000 people, according to the U.N. Few new facilities appear to be prepared, despite the military’s announcements that tents, medical centers and food would be present.
Before his family left Rafah to the zone, Iyad al-Masry said he had to sell the food they had received from aid groups to buy a tent for the equivalent of nearly $400.
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