May 18, 2024
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Thousands of Palestinians streamed onto Gaza’s only highway Friday, fleeing the combat zone in Gaza City in the north after Israel announced a window for safe passage.
Gaza’s largest city is the focus of Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 surprise incursion.
More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began. On Friday, a steady stream of civilians used both sides of Gaza’s main north-south highway.
Parents walked with small children, some evacuees crammed into covered donkey carts with possessions piled on the roof, and others rode on bicycles.
Since last weekend, the Israeli military has set aside several hours a day to enable civilians to escape northern Gaza, and it announced a six-hour window Friday.
A day earlier, the White House said Israel agreed to implement a brief humanitarian pause each day — in what appeared to be an effort to formalize and expand the process. Israel has also agreed to open a second route for people fleeing, the White House said.
In all, Israel estimated more than 850,000 of the 1.1 people in northern Gaza have left, according to military spokesman Jonathan Conricus, who called the pauses “quick humanitarian windows” that allow southward movement “while we are fighting.”
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which does not not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths, claims that more than 10,800 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, mainly in the initial Hamas attack, and 41 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.
Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel, and an attack on Tel Aviv wounded at least two people Friday, said Yossi Elkabetz, a paramedic with Israel’s rescue services. Hamas claimed credit.
Some 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have traded fire repeatedly.
