The Israeli military (IDF) on Friday asked Gaza civilians to evacuate the city within 24 hours and head “south.” According to the IDF, Hamas militants are hiding in underground tunnels and buildings inhabited by civilians. The Israeli military said civilians must “distance themselves” from Hamas terrorists and leave the city.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office also posted on social media three images of dead babies, which Netanyahu presented to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
At least 1,300 Israelis have so far died in Hamas terrorist attacks and at least 1,500 Palestinians have died in Israeli bombings.
From the other camp, Hamas has asked Palestinians living in Gaza not to leave the city.
According to the BBC’s calculations, the evacuation of the 1.1 million inhabitants of Gaza City is impossible to achieve in such a short interval: this would mean an evacuation of 40,000 inhabitants per hour.
The UN on Thursday launched an emergency appeal for donations worth 294 million dollars to meet the “urgent needs” of vulnerable locals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where more than 423,000 Palestinians have left their homes in recent days, AFP reports.
All UN humanitarian organizations called on Israel on Friday to cancel the order to completely evacuate the northern Gaza Strip in the next few hours “to avoid turning something that is already a tragedy into a catastrophic situation”.
Like the rest of the population of Gaza, all UN personnel are affected by this ultimatum, as well as the 440,000 displaced persons who have sought refuge in the schools and other facilities that the organization manages in that Palestinian territory.
The UN spokesman in Geneva, Orlando Gomez, said that senior UN officials and in particular the humanitarian coordinator for the region, Lynn Hastings, were making efforts to convince the Israeli authorities to back down, given the impossibility of complying with the order.
And the World Health Organization joined the criticism of the mass evacuation order issued by Israel, a spokesman for the institution assessing that it is impossible to transfer extremely sick or seriously injured people from the northern Gaza Strip. “Moving such people is a death sentence,” said spokesman Tarik Jasarevic.
The Palestinian authorities have informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of the “impossibility” of evacuating vulnerable patients from hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, as requested by the Israeli army, the UN agency announced on Friday, reports AFP.
“In the conditions of the ongoing (Israeli, n.r.) airstrikes, civilians have nowhere to go safely. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has informed WHO that it is impossible to evacuate vulnerable patients from hospitals in northern Gaza,” said Tarik Jasarevic, WHO spokesperson, in a UN press release. These patients include seriously injured people, as well as adults, children and newborns who are dependent on intensive care.
Palestinians start leaving their homes
Palestinians leave their homes and take with them everything they can carry in cars, trucks or even carts. The BBC writes that hundreds of cars, motorbikes and trucks, loaded with people, are lined up on the main highway in Gaza. Many people leave on foot and have taken camels, sheep, cows and donkeys with them.
Romanians in the Gaza Strip are desperately asking for help: “There are a lot of bombings. It’s a disaster”
The Romanians stuck in the Gaza Strip are desperately asking for help from the Bucharest authorities to return to the country. Some of them fled their homes for fear that at any moment there could be new and stronger bombardments. Two Romanian women sent desperate calls to Romanian officials through Digi24, saying that they are living in terror these days, without electricity, gas and water, hoping that they will be rescued soon.
“I didn’t have electricity, I didn’t have a battery. It’s only now that I got to charge a little at someone’s. The bombings are very, very strong. It’s a disaster,” said one of the Romanian women in the Gaza Strip. “I am asking the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our embassy in Ramallah to speed up our evacuation as soon as possible, because we are in great danger,” said another Romanian woman who has lived in Gaza for 20 years.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the Arab world to support Palestine
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated across the Middle East on Friday in support of the Palestinians and against Israeli airstrikes hitting Gaza. The risk of a wider regional conflict is rising as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion in the coastal strip, reports The Washington P
There are demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen.
From Amman, Jordan, to Yemen’s capital Sanaa, Muslims took to the streets after weekly Friday prayers, angered by Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, in a war that began after the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel last Saturday.
At Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli police allowed only elderly men, women and children into the sprawling hilltop complex for prayers, trying to limit the potential for violence.
The mosque is in a compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have turned violent before. Al-Aqsa is the third holiest site in Islam and is located on a site known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism. Police later fired tear gas into the Old City and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics treated six injured people, at least one of whom was beaten by officers.
In Beirut, thousands of Hezbollah supporters waved Lebanese, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, chanted pro-Gaza slogans and chanted “death to Israel”.
The Iran-backed militant group in neighboring Lebanon launched attacks after the Hamas attack, but did not engage in stronger strikes. However, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general warned that he would be wary of American and British ships heading to the Mediterranean. US officials, including President Joe Biden, have repeatedly warned Iran and the militias it supports in the Middle East not to participate in the conflict.
In Baghdad, tens of thousands of people gathered in Tahrir Square in the center of the Iraqi capital for protests called by influential Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
In Iran, a supporter of Hamas and regional enemy of Israel, it demonstrated in the streets. In Tehran, the country’s capital, Israeli and American flags were burned, chanting: “Death to Israel”, “Death to America”, “Israel will be condemned” and “Palestine will be the conqueror”.