People in Gaza City are trapped in houses and bodies lie uncollected in the streets, Palestinian officials and emergency responders have said, a day after the Israeli army told residents to use two “safe routes” to leave the city and head south.
According to a Reuters report, the Gaza health ministry said it had heard about people trapped and others killed inside their houses in the Tel Al Hawa and Sabra districts of Gaza City. Rescuers could not reach them, the ministry said.
The civil emergency service said it estimated that at least 30 people had been killed in the Tel Al-Hawa and Rimal areas and it could not recover bodies from the streets there.
On Wednesday, the Israeli army dropped leaflets warning “everyone in Gaza City” – the focus of a heavy Israeli assault this week – that it would “remain a dangerous combat zone”. The leaflets urged residents to flee, and set out designated escape routes from the area where the UN humanitarian office said up to 350,000 people had been sheltering.
The UN said the latest evacuations “will only fuel mass suffering for Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced many times”, and who face “critical levels of need”.
Many civilians told the Guardian they have concluded that there was no refuge in war-stricken Gaza and that they lacked confidence in the safe corridors set by Israel. Residents said they also feared that if they left they would not be able to take belongings or return.
“We will die but not leave to the south. We have tolerated starvation and bombs for nine months and we are ready to die as martyrs here,” Mohammad Ali, 30, told Reuters in a text message.
Hamas said the heavy Israeli assault on Gaza City this week could wreck efforts to finally end the war just as negotiations have entered the home stretch. In a statement, the Palestinian Islamist militant group said mediators had yet to provide it with updates on the state of the talks since it made concessions last week in response to a US-backed Israeli peace offer.
“The occupation continues its policy of stalling to buy time to foil this round of negotiations, as it has done in previous rounds,” the statement said.
The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said the US was “cautiously optimistic” about talks taking place in Egypt and Qatar.
“There are still gaps remaining between the two sides,” Kirby told the CNN. “We believe those gaps can be narrowed, and that’s what US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and CIA director Bill Burns are trying to do right now.’’
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who faces opposition from within his coalition government to any deal that would halt the war without Hamas being vanquished, has said a deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until it meets all its objectives.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.