Palestinians look at the destruction after Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis, Nov. 4, 2023.
Fatima Shbair / AP
Updated Nov. 4, 2023 at 1:26 p.m. ET
Israel’s military said Hamas attacked a safe passageway from northern Gaza during a three-hour evacuation window the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, had set on Saturday.
"The Hamas terrorist organization exploited the humanitarian window that the IDF provided to residents of the Gaza Strip to move southwards, and the terrorists fired mortars and anti-tank missiles at IDF troops who arrived and operated to open the route," the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
Earlier Saturday, the IDF announced there would be a brief three-hour window (starting 1 p.m. local time until 4 p.m.) for people trapped in northern Gaza to travel on the road to southern Gaza safely.
The Israeli military said it would "avoid hitting" a main road heading south, but emphasized that this was in no way a cease fire.
Hundreds of thousands of people still stuck in northern Gaza had three hours to flee south. But it appears few people, if any, were able to leave.
By the end of this window, NPR had not encountered anyone able to use this so-called safe passage. Several drivers there shared that it was impossible for anyone to make it through on the damaged street.
One driver told NPR that he and his brother were heading south and found that the roads were not passable, that "there are holes in the ground, and we saw body parts strewn all over Salah al-Din," the main highway in the Gaza Strip.
He said, "We were afraid to keep going because we heard shooting beyond the valley so we came back." This person asked NPR not to use their name out of concern for their safety.
The United Nations estimates that there could be as many 300,000 internally displaced people still stuck in northern Gaza, including Gaza City — an area Israeli forces have surrounded as part of their ground operation.
It's been about a week since Israeli troops pushed into Gaza through a ground offensive and remained in the Strip. This military effort has mostly been focused in the north and has effectively cut the strip in half, preventing aid from getting in or civilians from getting out.
The Palestinian death toll from Israel's response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack is now at 9,488 people in Gaza — nearly 70% of them being women and children, according to the Ministry of Health.
If any civilians were able to flee to the south of Gaza during the window, they could likely move no further than that once they arrived.
Officials in Gaza also closed the one available border crossing from Gaza into Egypt on Saturday. They said foreign passport holders will not be allowed to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt unless patients from the hospitals in Gaza City and northern Gaza are permitted to get to the crossing.
The crossing has been opened the past three days for Palestinians with foreign nationalities, or Palestinians with connections to foreign countries and foreign employers. The list of people approved to leave Gaza today — in what would have been the fourth day for the border to be open — included more Americans.
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