FLEEING SOUTH, PALESTINIANS DESCRIBE DEATH AND MISERY
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — A stream of thousands of Palestinians have taken what few belongings they can carry and made their way on foot Friday to the relative safety of the southern Gaza Strip after Israel announced an hourslong window for safe passage.
More than 720,000 displaced people across the Gaza Strip were sheltering at 150 facilities run by UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, as of Thursday.
One woman who was displaced from Beit Lahiya in the north, Umm al-Adhan, spoke to The Associated Press on Gaza’s main highway as as people trudged past heading southward. She said she had been sheltering in a UNRWA school.
“Yesterday, as we were leaving the school, they fired at us,” she said. “Ten people were killed, including my nephew.”
A badly wounded child begged for water in his final moments.
“I could not find water to give him. He died in front of me,” she said, crying.
Israel estimates that more than 850,000 of the 1.1 people in northern Gaza have left, and later Friday said over 100,000 Palestinians have gone south in the past two days.
At shelters, the lack of water makes it hard to maintain even basic hygiene.
Families are packed into a school building in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, with tents set up in the playground, washing hung up to dry in corridors and children sleeping on mats next to their worried parents.
Suzan Wahidi, from Gaza City, says as many as seven people might share a mattress — if they can find one.
“Our children are now suffering from an epidemic, ” she said. “They suffer from all the diseases that you can imagine, diarrhea, vomiting, fever. There are no medicines, there is no food to provide us.”
Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing northern Gaza as Israel’s military pushed deeper into dense urban neighborhoods in its battle with Hamas.
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