(image credit: OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)
The Israeli military forced thousands of Palestinians in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, to flee from one of the last remaining shelters and surrounding homes in the besieged town in the early hours of Wednesday morning, sending men, women and children on an hours-long death march under heavy artillery shelling and gunfire.
Thousands of displaced families had been taking shelter in the Abu Tamam school complex in Beit Lahia in a last ditch effort to remain in the town amid a brutal extermination and expulsion campaign conducted by Israeli forces in northern Gaza over the last two months.
Israeli troops assaulted the school complex, shelled and bombed the area, and issued expulsion orders through quadcopters fitted with loudspeakers, according to witnesses, forcing terrified families outside in the middle of the night. Leaving much of their scant belongings behind, civilians were forced to walk for an hour and a half, along Salah al-Din road—the main thoroughfare running through the enclave—before being forced to pass through an Israeli checkpoint.
Witnesses describe tear-streaked children covered in dust running panicked in the streets as warplanes and drones roared overhead. Some pleaded for water but Israeli soldiers refused to give them anything and instead poured water on the ground in front of them to taunt them, according to witnesses. At the checkpoint, Israeli troops separated the men and detained them as their families screamed in desperation. Witnesses described children clinging to Israeli tanks in a desperate attempt to stay with their fathers.
After the checkpoint, families were forced to walk for hours more, through the day, making their way a harrowing 10 kilometers south to Gaza City. Some of the wounded fell on the road with no hope of getting treatment. "I was walking with my sister in the street,” said Rahaf, 16. She and her sister were the sole survivors in their family of an earlier airstrike that killed 70 people. “Suddenly my sister fell due to the bombing. I saw blood pouring from her, but I couldn't do anything. I left her in the street, and no one pulled her out. I was screaming, but no one heard me."
Read here the full testimony by Drop Site News
