2023-10-14 13:58:09
A window of just a few hours. The Israeli army on Saturday recommended to the population of Gaza City “not to delay” in evacuating their homes and moving towards the south of the Palestinian territory before the launch of a military offensive, while the roads are already crowded in the north.
There is a “slot from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.” (11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Paris time) on Saturday, army spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters, without specifying whether there was a deadline. “We know this is going to take time, but we recommend people not to wait,” he added.
Thousands of Gaza residents once again piled into buses, cars and donkey carts on Saturday to flee the northern area.
For its part, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in Gaza since 2007, rejected the evacuation call. “Our Palestinian people reject the threat of the leaders of the occupation (Israel, editor’s note) and their calls to leave their homes and flee to the south or Egypt,” he declared on Friday.
The head of German diplomacy, Annalena Baerbock, for her part denounced “the perfidious calculation” of Hamas which uses the population of Gaza, bombed by Israel, as a “shield”, during a visit to Israel on Friday.
The United Nations, the United States and the European Union have called on Israel to delay the planned offensive to give civilians time to leave.
The Israeli army indicated that Gaza City was at the heart of its operations because it is the place where the leaders of Hamas are based, which launched a bloody attack against Israel on October 7 in which at least 1,300 people were killed. .
On the Palestinian side, the number of deaths in Gaza rose to 2,215 deaths including 724 children, according to a new report on Saturday.
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