Palestinians living in the ruins of Gaza City were bombarded with Israeli leaflets yesterday ordering them out, after Israel said it was about to obliterate the area in an assault to wipe out Hamas, causing panic and confusion.Residents of the city, the enclave's biggest urban centre that was home to a million Palestinians before the war, have been expecting an onslaught for weeks. "I say to the residents of Gaza, take this opportunity and listen to me carefully: you have been warned — get out of there!" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.The Israeli military airdropped leaflets with evacuation orders onto residents standing amid the rubble of Gaza City, where it has bombed residential towers to the ground in the past few days.The evacuation orders rattled the city's residents who say there is no safe place to go to escape bombardment and a humanitarian crisis. Some said they would have no choice but to leave for the south, but many said they would stay and there were no immediate signs of a mass exodus.Anxiety was spreading through a tent area in Gaza City housing displaced cancer patients."There's no place left, not in the south, nor the north, nothing. We’ve become completely trapped," said one of the patients, Bajess al-Khaldi, as people looked at the rubble of several buildings destroyed in an Israeli attack.Displacement is a profound issue for Palestinians who fear that Netanyahu and his far-right allies in government want a repeat of the "Nakba", or "catastrophe", when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were driven out during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel's creation.Israel has been widely accused of genocide, including by the world's biggest group of genocide scholars, over its nearly two-year campaign in the Palestinian enclave that has killed more than 64,000 people according to local authorities.The health authorities in Gaza announced they would not evacuate Gaza City's two main operational hospitals, Al Shifa and Al Ahli, adding that doctors would not leave patients unattended.Most Gazans have already been displaced several times since the war started, much of the territory lies in ruins and a hunger crisis has grown far worse in recent months.The Israeli military has instructed residents in Gaza City to move to a designated "humanitarian zone" in the already overcrowded Al-Mawasi area along the coast in the south, where thousands of Palestinians have already been sheltering in tents. Israel has also regularly bombed the south.Launching the new Israeli assault could complicate ceasefire efforts to end the nearly two-year war. Hopes had been pinned on mediation efforts to reach a ceasefire that would avert Israel's plan.*********************Gaza massacre tollmounts to 64,605The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported that the death toll from the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, which began on Oct. 7, 2023, has reached 64,605 martyrs and 163,316 injured. In a statement today, the ministry said that within the last 24 hours, hospitals in the Gaza Strip received 83 martyrs and 223 injured people. (QNA)
September 10, 2025 | 12:01 AM