Israel says it has given a four-hour window for civilians inside Gaza City to evacuate the area and move to the south, as the occupying regime continues its deadly bombing campaign in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military made the announcement in a statement on Saturday, saying the window to leave the city will be open from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.
Residents who escaped Gaza City reported a terrifying journey, saying they passed tanks in position to possibly begin a ground invasion.
“The most dangerous trip in my life. We saw the tanks from point blank. We saw decomposed body parts. We saw death,” a resident said as he posted a selfie of himself on the road out of Gaza City.
According to UN monitors, during a four-hour evacuation window on Sunday, fewer than 2,000 made the move, followed by about 5,000 on Monday.
The latest development comes as Israel has already ordered some 1.1 million living in northern Gaza to evacuate to southern regions as the regime prepares a full-scale ground invasion into the small blockaded territory.
However, it has continued to rain down bombs on the south.
According to Palestinian health officials, at least 23 people were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes early on Tuesday in the southern Gaza cities of Khan Younis and Rafah.
“We are civilians,” said a survivor who was rescued from the rubble of a house in Khan Younis. “This is the bravery of the so-called Israel, they show their might and power against civilians, babies inside, kids inside, and elderly.”
Tuesday’s evacuation order comes as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has decried a month-long “carnage” in the region.
“It has been one full month of carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair,” Turk said in a statement at the start of a trip to the region, during which he will visit the Rafah crossing from Egypt, the only lifeline for Gaza.
“Human rights violations are at the root of this escalation and human rights play a central role in finding a way out of this vortex of pain,” he added.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched a surprise attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, into the occupied territories in response to the Israeli regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
According to the Gaza-based health ministry, at least 10,328 Palestinians have been killed in the strikes, most of them women and children, while nearly 26,000 others have been injured.
