Seventy people, mostly women and children, were killed in Israeli air strikes on convoys fleeing Gaza City, the Hamas media office announced, and the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed.
Hamas said the cars were attacked in three places while traveling south of Gaza City.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza confirmed the Hamas statement, and American NBC reported meeting people in hospitals who lost family members in airstrikes as they fled from the north to the south.
Al Jazeera reports from two witnesses of an airstrike on evacuation vehicles near the city of Deir el-Balah, south of the evacuation zone.
Fayza Hamoudi said she and her family were driving from their home in northern Gaza when two vehicles in front of them suddenly burst into flames. A witness from another car on the road told a similar story.
“Why should we believe that they [the Israelis] are trying to protect us?” They are sick,” Hamoudi said.
Already, at least 423,000 people, nearly one in five Gazans, have been forced from their homes by Israeli airstrikes, the UN said on Thursday.
On Friday morning, the Israeli army gave the Palestinians an ultimatum to leave northern Gaza within 24 hours. More than a million people live in the area, and Gaza is already in a desperate state due to constant bombardment.
“Moving more than a million people across a densely populated war zone to a place without food, water or shelter when the entire territory is under siege is extremely dangerous, and in some cases simply not possible,” Antonio Guterres said during brief remarks at UN headquarters in New York.
UN spokesman said it would be impossible to organize such a mass evacuation without “devastating humanitarian consequences”. He called on Israel to revoke any such orders, saying they could “turn what is already a tragedy into a catastrophic situation,” Klix.ba reports.
