Palestinians fleeing Jabalia say bodies are left lying on streets

BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme interviewed several displaced people who had recently fled Jabalia camp and sought refuge in the nearby Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City.

A man called Saleh said he had “endured a siege for 16 days” while sheltering with his family at Abu Hussein Primary School for Boys.

Medics and rescue workers said more than 20 people were killed in an Israeli air strike there last week. The Israeli military named on Tuesday 18 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters who it said were among the dead.

“The shelling grew closer and intensified each day, with Israeli forces advancing towards us. Today, we heard bombings very near… We feared for our lives,” Saleh said.

“We received messages via [Israeli] quadcopters urging us to evacuate, so we began to move under the watch of Israeli soldiers, who demanded we go towards either the south or west of Gaza… I had my grandmother with me, she was unable to move, like many others.”

Another man, Mohammed al-Danani, said he was at the same school and that he had “witnessed the bodies of martyrs on the streets” after complying with the evacuation order.

Engy Abdel Aal said she had been in the Abu Rashid Pond area when quadcopters broadcast orders directing people to move towards the town of Beit Lahia, just north of the camp.

“The situation was incredibly difficult, no-one knew where to go. It’s tragic and catastrophic in every sense,” she said. “Some people had to flee without their children, leaving them behind in the school while they escaped with others.”

The Israeli military announced on Tuesday that it troops were “continuing combat in the Jabalia area, while enabling the secure evacuation of civilians from the combat zone”.

“As a result, thousands of civilians have been evacuated. Dozens of terrorists were arrested from among the civilians,” it said in a post on X that included a video showing crowds walking through damaged streets, external.

The military also said that troops “eliminated 10 terrorists that posed a threat and operated adjacent to them” in a single strike, without giving any details.

The Palestinian Red Crescent meanwhile posted a video that it said showed an ambulance transporting the bodies of five people, including children, killed by shelling in Jabalia town on Monday.

Another graphic video filmed on the same day showed paramedic Nevin al-Dawasah trying to help dead and wounded men, women and children at a tented camp next to Jabalia Preparatory School for Boys.

After fleeing the area on Tuesday, Ms Dawasah told AFP news agency that people had been complying with an evacuation order when “suddenly there was shelling”.

“We had martyrs and wounded and there was no safe passage for the ambulances to come,” she said.

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the reports.