Dozens of people, mostly women and children, have been killed and wounded in Israeli airstrikes on evacuation convoys fleeing Gaza City on Friday.
The grisly scenes showed dead bodies scattered on the roads, cars on fire and small pools of blood everywhere, before official sources confirmed the attacks.
According to Palestinian and international sources, the number of those killed is estimated to be 70 with hundreds more wounded.
The moment a Palestinian civilian convoy was attacked by Israeli missiles.
75 Palestinians were killed as they were fleeing to the south, following Israel's order. #Gazagenocide #GazaEvacuation #GazaCity #GazaTerror #gazawar #gazaWarCrimes pic.twitter.com/AqVFBJQC3D
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 14, 2023
Israel’s Evacuation Order
The gruesome event was instigated by a call made by the Israeli army for nearly 1.1 million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza and to evacuate north, so that their lives may be spared.
The opposite took place, when the fleeing war refugees were themselves targeted by Israeli bombs.
The UN humanitarian body, OCHA, said several “vehicles of those evacuating the north were hit, killing more than 40 people and injuring 150 others,” citing data from health officials in Gaza.
Media reports however say at least 70 were killed and over 250 injured in separate incidents throughout the Strip.
“These incidents prompted many people to abandon their evacuation efforts and return home,” the UN agency added, as “heavy Israeli bombardments, from the air, sea and land, have continued almost uninterrupted.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry said that Al-Shifa Medical Complex was treating “dozens of victims” injured “as a result of the Israeli occupation forces targeting citizens who were forced to leave their homes.”
"The consequence is to license Israel, in the eyes of the public and the politicians, to do whatever it wants to do in Gaza, where within a few days Israel had already killed hundreds of children."
Read the latest article by Professor Jeremy Salt. https://t.co/zbY6e6mzYt pic.twitter.com/l8e2Q0zvGf
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 14, 2023
‘Humanitarian Step’
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled south after Israel issued its order on Thursday night, initially giving Gaza residents 24 hours to evacuate from the north to “save their lives” ahead of an expected ground offensive.
Even prior to the evacuation orders, the UN had reported that at least 400,000 Palestinians had already been internally displaced.
The Israeli army had described its evacuation order as a “humanitarian step.”
Israel has faced widespread criticism from human rights organizations for the forced relocation order, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urging Tel Aviv to reconsider it, insisting that “even wars have rules” and telling all sides to respect international humanitarian norms.
“Moving more than 1 million people across a densely populated warzone to a place with no food, water, or accommodation when the entire territory is under siege, is extremely dangerous and, in some cases, simply not possible,” Guterres said on the social media platform X early Saturday morning.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also appealed to Israel to “immediately rescind orders for the evacuation of over 1 million people living north of Wadi Gaza,” saying that a “mass evacuation would be disastrous – for patients, health workers and other civilians left behind or caught in the mass movement.”
“With ongoing airstrikes and closed borders, civilians have no safe place to go,” the WHO said on Friday.
RED CROSS: The Red Cross spokesman in #Jerusalem told Aljazeera that he is deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in #Gaza, stressing that the Red Cross is unable to deliver aid to the residents of the Strip.
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— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 14, 2023
(RT, PC)
Reminds me of reading Abbas El-Zein’s memoir “Leave To Remain”, where he talks about his grandmother being killed by exactly the same tactic – promise safety if you flee, then bomb the roads. And I say “tactic” knowing precisely what I am saying – modern weapons are supposed to clear the “fog of war”, so that when a military pilot drops a bomb or fires a missile, he knows exactly what he is doing. This therefore should be referred to the International Criminal Court under the charge of Genocide:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide
Genocide convention, Article 2, (a) Killing members of the group;