Residents fleeing Gaza City waved white flags in front of Israeli tanks that were reportedly protecting them from Hamas gunfire on Tuesday as civilians evacuated during a four-hour period that Israel gave before storming in.
The Israel Defense Forces released images of dozens of Palestinians walking and riding donkey carts from the Gaza Strip’s largest city toward “safe zones” to the south between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time.
The video captured residents passing Israeli tanks that 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 while helping to clear the evacuation route and that the army ended up protecting Palestinian civilians from the terrorists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday night: “We are fighting an enemy that is particularly brutal.
“They are using their civilians as human shields, and while we ask the Palestinian civilian population to leave the war zone, they prevent it at gunpoint.”
But some Gaza residents said Israeli soldiers also fired near them, possibly to scare them.
Palestinians said Israeli soldiers ordered them to raise their hands and wave white flags to signal to Israeli forces that they were evacuating.
Hamas, which says 900,000 Palestinians are still sheltered in northern Gaza, accused the IDF of forcing evacuees to wave flags to humiliate them.
The evacuations came a day after about 5,000 people fled Gaza City on foot in another four-hour period, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“As the roads leading to the main crossing had been severely damaged, it was only possible to reach it on foot,” OCHA wrote on Facebook on Monday evening.
“Entire families, including children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, reported walking long distances carrying their personal belongings in hand,” the post said.
Adam Fayez Zeyara, a Gaza City resident, posted a selfie of himself along the route online and called the trip “The most dangerous trip of my life.
“We saw the tanks at close range. We saw decomposing body parts. “We saw death,” said the shocked resident.
The heartbreaking event occurred 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 Monday night that Israel would protect Gaza for an “indefinite” period of time after to oust terrorists from power.
But Mark Regev, a senior adviser to the prime minister, appeared to try to downplay his boss’ potentially incendiary comments during an interview with CNN on Tuesday.
Regev said Israel’s postwar plan does not involve “continued occupation.”
Follow The Post’s live blog for the latest on Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“There will have to be an Israeli security presence, but that doesn’t mean Israel is reoccupying Gaza, that doesn’t mean Israel is there to govern the people of Gaza,” Netanyahu’s aide said.
“On the contrary, we are interested in establishing new frameworks where Gazans can govern themselves, where there can be international support for the reconstruction of Gaza.
“Hopefully, we will be able to attract countries, also Arab countries, to the reconstruction of a demilitarized post-Hamas Gaza,” Regev said.
– Netanyahu on Monday rejected a proposal from his main ally, President Biden, to pause the fighting to allow more aid to reach the densely populated region, which is reeling from depleting supplies of food, medicine, fuel and water, unless there is some kind of compensation. pro quo of Hamas.
Israel’s critics have been demanding such “humanitarian pauses.”
“It has been a full month of carnage, of relentless suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair,” U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Volcker Turk said in a statement Tuesday as he traveled to the region to observe the Rafah crossing from Egypt, which is the only route for humanitarian aid to the blocked and besieged territory.
Netanyahu later said he could allow “small pauses.”
“Well, there will be no ceasefire, a general ceasefire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu said. “As for small tactical breaks, an hour here, an hour there. We’ve had them before, I guess, we’ll check the circumstances to allow goods, humanitarian goods, to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages, to come out. But I don’t think there will be a general ceasefire.”
— Israel said it has struck more than 14,000 terrorist targets in the last month.
The IDF has “destroyed more than 100 terrorist tunnels and more than 4,000 weapons, many of which were located inside mosques, daycare centers and residential buildings,” said IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
— Israel said its troops had been attacked by Hamas fighters who “came out” of tunnels in Gaza City to fire rocket-propelled grenades at them, adding Tuesday that it destroyed several tunnels in a residential area in Beit Hanoun, in the northeast of Gaza. Band.
“We are really making an effort to eliminate these tunnels as we move forward and get closer to Gaza City,” said the Israeli lieutenant colonel. Richard Hecht told reporters.
A Palestinian woman holds a white flag as she evacuates with a group of civilians from the northern Gaza Strip towards the southern edge of the 40 kilometer-long territory on Tuesday.REUTERS
–The World Health Organization said Tuesday that the destruction of Gaza’s medical facilities has forced some doctors to perform operations, including amputations, without anesthesia.
–As Israel implored Palestinian residents to flee their homes and head south, two Israeli airstrikes on the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah killed 23 people on Tuesday, according to Hamas-controlled health officials.
Rescuers in Khan Younis tried to pull out a girl buried up to her waist in rubble from the rubble of a house that was bombed, killing 11 people.
“We are civilians,” said resident Ahmed Ayesh, who was rescued.
“This is the bravery of the so-called Israel: they show their strength and power against the civilians, the babies inside, the children inside and the elderly,” the man roared.
–On Tuesday, 400 American citizens and their family members were allowed to enter Egypt, according to the State Department, the Jerusalem Post reported.
One hundred Egyptians and 262 Jordanian citizens were also allowed to leave Gaza, officials said.
Palestinians evacuate a building hit by Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Sunday.AP
While hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports have been allowed to escape to Africa since last week, almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been trapped in the narrow strip.
“It’s just a horror movie that repeats itself over and over again,” said Suzan Beseiso, 31, a Palestinian-American who was able to leave Gaza for Egypt last week, from Cairo.
“Without sleeping. Without food. There’s no water. You keep evacuating from one place to another.”
— France and Germany are seeing furious spikes in anti-Semitic acts, according to new figures released by both countries on Tuesday, and a German official noted the announcement “with great pain, just two days before the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht of 1938,” referring to the Violent Nazi attacks on Jewish homes and businesses in November 1938.
— Gaza health officials linked to Hamas said Monday that more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s relentless airstrikes in the month since terrorists invaded Israel and massacred more than 1,400 people and kidnapped about 250 more. The Palestinian terrorists did not differentiate between civilians and militants in their killing.
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 ask for the immediate release of the hostages,” said the director. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in X.
“History will judge us all for what we do to end this tragedy.”
With post cables
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Source: vtt.edu.vn