Poised for Attack, Israel Steps Up Calls for Gaza Residents to Leave ‘Battle Zone’

As Israeli troops massed near the border with the Gaza Strip on Saturday, fears of an imminent ground invasion created an exodus from northern Gaza amid a dire scarcity in the territory of water and other essentials. The United Nations said that nearly 1 million Gazans had fled their homes.

In Israel, the military said Saturday it would continue to expand operations to include “an integrated and coordinated attack from the air, sea and land.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli soldiers readying for attack.

Across the border, evacuees fleeing the anticipated invasion of northern Gaza struggled to find food, water and shelter in the south. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency dedicated to Palestinians, said an electricity blackout and a lack of drinking water had become “a matter of life or death.”

And as the United States, Egypt and Israel discussed terms for a safe passage of U.S. citizens out of the territory, the vast majority of the more than 2 million residents in Gaza were trapped as Israeli airstrikes continued.

Gazan authorities said Israel was responsible for an explosion Friday that killed at least 70 people traveling in a convoy fleeing south. Israel said it was looking into the matter.

The Israeli military stepped up its efforts to persuade hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians to leave northern Gaza, warning in pamphlets dropped from the sky that Gaza City had become a “battle zone.”

Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, warned of “challenging weeks” ahead as the military operation escalated. The goal, he said, was “the defeat of Hamas and the elimination of its leaders.”

As of Saturday, it had been one week since Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, attacked Israel, killing more than 1,300 people.

On Friday, the Israeli military conducted limited raids in and out of Gaza. Palestinian officials say 2,228 people have been killed in Gaza in the past week and that more than 8,744 have been injured.

Lazzarini, who leads the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, said Saturday that no humanitarian supplies had been allowed into Gaza for the past week. The territory’s water plant and public water networks had stopped working, he said.

“It’s a struggle for life here,” a Gaza resident, Zeina Ghanem, said Saturday. “There’s no food. There’s no water. There’s no sleep.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-humanitarian-crisis.html">The New York Times</a>.