War-weary Palestinians are fleeing north Gaza amid a continuing and deadly siege by Israel’s military.
Online videos showed hundreds of displaced people on Monday funnelling into a checkpoint manned by soldiers in Jabalia, the focus of the massive Israeli military operation launched against the city in early October.
Trapped for days as Israeli forces unleashed the sweeping assault, people in the area have been rounded up and searched by soldiers before being instructed to leave.
Walking past an Israeli tank on a rubble-strewn dirt road, they were frisked as they passed through a checkpoint in single file.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, estimates that about 400,000 people remain in Gaza’s north, including Gaza City, which hosts the Jabalia refugee camp.
UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge said that “tens of thousands of people have been displaced from northern areas” including Jabalia to Gaza City as well as other parts of the territory’s north spared the worst of the violence.
Frequent Israeli shelling and damaged roads have made it nearly impossible for paramedics and ambulances to reach the wounded and dead.
Israel has killed at least 450 people in the area since it besieged the northern reaches of the enclave on October 6, according to medics who spoke to Al Jazeera.
“We have injuries and martyrs every moment,” said civil defence paramedic Motaz Ayoub, but “anyone who is injured continues to bleed until they die.”
With little access, already dire shortages have been made worse. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that all hospitals in northern Gaza except one are out of service.
The only medical facility still only partially functioning has “no medicine or medical supplies”, said Hossam Abu Safia, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital.
“People are being killed in the streets, and we can’t help them,” he said. “Bodies are lying on the streets.”