Israeli assault sends terrified Palestinians fleeing north Gaza

Trapped for days as Israeli forces unleashed a sweeping assault, then rounded up and searched by troops who told them to leave, thousands of war-weary Palestinians have fled north Gaza.

Online videos verified by AFP showed dozens of displaced Gazans funnelling on Monday into a checkpoint manned by soldiers in Jabalia, the focus of the massive Israeli military operation since early October.

Walking past an Israeli tank on a rubble-strewn dirt road, they were checked before being allowed through in a single file.

Paramedic Nevin al-Dawasah said she was trapped for 16 days in a shelter for displaced people in the Jabalia refugee camp.

Eventually, she told AFP, an Israeli army drone equipped with loudspeakers was "telling us that the Israel Defense Forces were asking us to evacuate".

"We responded and... evacuated the shelter, but suddenly there was shelling" that killed some people and wounded others, said Dawasah.

She said she felt compelled to take videos of the wounded because "there are no journalists in the north", already ravaged by successive Israeli operations during more than a year of war triggered by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The Gaza civil defence agency said last week that at least 400 people have been killed in the ongoing Israeli assault, which began on October 6.

The military says it is targeting Hamas militants who have regrouped in the area.

Though not a formal Israeli policy, analysts have told AFP that proposals for a full siege of northern Gaza to close in on militants were gaining traction.

And some members of the Israeli government have openly called for the resettlement of the Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in 1967 and maintained troops and settlements there until 2005.

- 'Deserve to be beaten' -

Many Palestinians in northern Gaza said they felt trapped and powerless amid the widespread destruction and soaring deaths.

Saida, 46, has fled with her mother and four children from a UN school-turned-shelter in Jabalia.

She said Israeli soldiers made her wait three hours at a checkpoint and detained her son.

"They took my 15-year-old son, Amjad, and forced him to strip naked," Saida, who gave her first name only for security reasons, told AFP by phone.

She said the troops were "questioning him and asking if he knew anyone from Hamas".

Dawasah also said she had to pass through an Israeli checkpoint as she was leaving Jabalia.

"When we left the shelter, the Israeli occupation set up checkpoints and separated the women and men on each side and searched them," she said.

More checkpoints have been set up on main roads, often surrounded by tanks and armoured vehicles. Fleeing Palestinians also saw observation towers equipped with cameras and automatic weapons.

"They were telling us to go... and saying we deserve to be beaten. They repeated it more than hundred times from the top of the tank," said Dawasah, who added that she saw several men being detained.

"We were very afraid."

The Hamas government has downplayed the scale of the displacement, claiming most Palestinians have stayed in the north.

Government spokesman Ismail Thawabteh told AFP that "only a small number of citizens" were responding to the army's calls to evacuate.

"The (Israeli) occupation is killing many displaced young men and arresting them in humiliating ways," he said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, estimates that about 400,000 people remain in Gaza's north, which includes Gaza City.

UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge said on Monday that "tens of thousands of people have been displaced from northern areas" including Jabalia to Gaza City or other parts of the territory's north spared the worst of the violence.

- 'Bodies on the streets' -

The Hamas government media office urged international action to "stop the crimes of forced displacement, ethnic cleansing and massacres being carried out" in northern Gaza.

Frequent Israeli shelling and damaged roads have made it nearly impossible for paramedics and ambulances to reach the wounded and dead.

"We have injuries and martyrs every moment," said civil defence paramedic Motaz Ayoub.

But "anyone who is injured continues to bleed until they die," Ayoub told AFP.

With little access to the besieged north, already dire shortages have been made worse.

The Palestinian health ministry reported that all hospitals in northern Gaza but one were out of service.

The only medical facility still only partially functioning in the area affected by the Israeli assault has "no medicine or medical supplies", said Kamal Adwan hospital director Hossam Abu Safia.

"People are being killed in the streets, and we can't help them. Bodies are lying on the streets."