Palestinians flee northern Gaza before expected Israeli ground invasion

Thousands pack into cars and trucks or leave on foot after Israel told them to go, as violence flares in East Jerusalem and West Bank

Thousands of people have been fleeing to the southern half of Gaza before an expected ground invasion of the blockaded strip as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict descends into its bloodiest period in decades.

Hamas said 70 people had been killed when warplanes struck cars fleeing south on Friday, while Israel’s military said that its troops backed by tanks had conducted the first raids inside Gaza since the crisis began.

Amid growing fears of escalating violence on several fronts after last weekend’s massacre of Israeli civilians by the militant group Hamas, almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million trapped civilians faced the decision of whether to leave home, possibly never to return, after the Israeli army issued mass evacuation orders in the early hours of Friday.

Messages from Hamas broadcast by mosques around the strip called on residents to stay put on Friday after the order from Israel for the population to move south of the Gaza River, just south of Gaza City. Hamas called it “Israeli propaganda” and urged residents to “hold on to your homes and land”.

Joe Biden said it was a priority to “urgently address the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas and Hamas’s appalling attacks, and they’re suffering as a result as well,” he said.

The UN warned that the order to flee en masse would be calamitous, and urged Israel to reverse its order. The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said the situation in Gaza had reached “a dangerous new low” and called for immediate humanitarian access. “Even wars have rules,” he said.

But Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the bombardment of Gaza was “just the beginning” of his country’s response. “Our enemies have only just begun to pay the price,” he said late on Friday.

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