The Israeli military has issued an ominous warning to Gaza City residents, announcing it will deploy "unprecedented force" in the area while urging civilians to evacuate south. The Salah al-Din road, recently used as a main evacuation route, has now been shut, leaving one street as the only remaining passage out. In a post on X, military spokesman Avichay Adraee urged residents "to take this opportunity and join the hundreds of thousands of city residents who have moved south to the humanitarian area." He said the Israeli military will operate with "unprecedented and extreme force against Hamas and other terrorist organizations."
The renewed push comes as Israeli artillery, tanks, and warplanes continue to strike Gaza City, which the Israeli military describes as Hamas' "main stronghold," the Guardian reports. According to Israeli officials, roughly 450,000 civilians have fled the city, a figure calculated using drone surveillance and other intelligence sources. The United Nations has reported fresh waves of mass displacement, with 60,000 people fleeing in the last 72 hours following intensified assaults. Before Israel began the offensive weeks ago, around a million people were in Gaza City, many of them displaced from elsewhere in the territory.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the United Nations' humanitarian office, tells the BBC that she traveled to Gaza City two days ago—a round-trip that took 14 hours from a city 18 miles away—and "the things there, and the scenes on the way to Gaza City, are nothing short of cataclysmic." She says many people are unable to comply with evacuation orders.
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"The expense of moving your belongings, if you are lucky enough to find a vehicle that will move them, is exorbitant," Cherevko says. "It's not affordable for many people. And that's why many are doing this on foot, with barely a mattress in their hands and maybe a plastic bag." In a post on X Thursday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that overwhelmed hospitals are on the brink of collapse. He called for an immediate ceasefire, saying the offensive and evacuation orders are forcing traumatized families "into an ever-shrinking area unfit for human dignity. The injured and people with disabilities cannot move to safety, which puts their lives in grave danger."
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