2023-11-18 23:51:17
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled “the terror” caused by the continuing Israeli offensive against northern Gaza. The last to find refuge in the southern city of Rafah tell hardship, hunger and thirst of the days when everyone feared for their lives.
“In the last few hours there were many bombs, terrible destruction,” a Palestinian who identifies himself as Mohamed and who lived in the Gazan neighborhood of Sabra, tells EFE, where he claims he saw bodies lying in the streets.
For Mohamed, the evacuation “has been the journey of death.” He says he only saw destruction through the different neighborhoods through which he moved before reaching the route opened several hours every day by Israeli troops on the Salah al Din road, which runs through central Gaza and from north to south.
Gaza became a scene of destruction, rubble and corpses. Photo: EFE
This road has been used by a good part of the more than 1.5 million Gazans, out of a total of 2.3 million, displaced since the beginning of the war, who are now mostly overcrowded in the towns in the south of the enclave. “You can’t be there. I have crossed several areas in the north and there are attacks in all of them,” he concluded.
A Palestinian from Beit Hanun, from the Al Barrawi family, says that on the same day the war began, after the devastating and brutal attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli soil on October 7, they received “threats” from Israel, In fact evacuation ordersthrough mobile phones to get them to leave their home and move to the south, so they decided to take refuge in a school.
He explains that despite the situation, they preferred to stay in the north, until they couldn’t take it anymore: “It is the worst moment of my life, the most difficult. There is not a single safe place in Gaza, there is no stability, there is no security, there are no human rights.”
Like the rest of the displaced, he says that upon reaching the Salah al Din road there is a checkpoint where you have to raise your hands and show your identification card, and that you could see many dead people lying on the ground.
A group of Palestinians evacuated from northern Gaza as the Israeli offensive grows. Photo: EFE
Hunger and thirst
Nazal Abu Saada, a resident of the Yabalia neighborhood, talks about the difficulties he has experienced in the last month and the terror and hunger of the last three days. She says that she and her family took refuge in a hospital. “The last three days we spent under a table, without food or water or anything, just dates and a little water.”
He says that after the Red Crescent “reached an agreement with the Israelis,” they were given one hour to leave the hospital. There he saw tanks and points out that they were forced to go with their hands raised. In Salah Al Din, he adds, they were photographed with a camera, a fact that numerous displaced people have reported.
Jaula Hashem reports that his house was bombed after they had abandoned it. “Every so many bombs, bombs and more bombs were thrown at us. What do they want to do more than what they have already done? ”He adds and breaks down crying before saying that they killed his father. When he composes himself, he explains that the soldiers detained people at the checkpoint.
Abu Atal, from the Sabra neighborhood, says that he spent the last three days without knowing what was happening and unable to sleep due to the continuous attacks. “It’s something terrifying, this is not a war,” says Abu Atal, who also recounts how he had to raise his hands and show his identity card and how he saw the arrest of some people.
However, he does not remember if there were cameras or not: “I didn’t realize if there were cameras. With the noise and the fear I didn’t pay attention,” she clarifies.
What he did see, like the rest of the displaced, was the destruction on the road caused by bombings and artillery and numerous bodies abandoned in the streets.
#harsh #story #people #flee #bombs #Gaza