Rumors about checkpoint opening
Thousands of Palestinians are moving to northern Gaza
April 15, 2024, 12:15 a.m
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After the Israeli army withdrew from Khan Yunis, Palestinian refugees leave the city. They walk along the coastal road to return to the north. They hope that the checkpoint will be opened, but so far in vain.
In the Gaza Strip, thousands of people headed north after rumors spread that a checkpoint would be opened. As a journalist from the AFP news agency reported, most people walked the coastal road from south to north, including mothers with small children and families who had loaded their luggage on donkey carts.
People were hoping to pass through a military checkpoint on Al-Rashid Street and reach the city of Gaza in the north of the Palestinian territory. But the Israeli army told AFP that reports of the checkpoint opening were “not true.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the checkpoint, families waited for their loved ones to return to Gaza. Palestinian Mahmoud Audeh said he was waiting for his wife, who has been holding out in the southern city of Khan Yunis since the war began on October 7. “She told me on the phone that people were leaving the southern part and moving north,” the man said. “She told me she will wait at the checkpoint until the army agrees to let her go further north.” During the day, rumors also spread that the Israeli army was allowing women, children and men over 50 to return to the north. This claim was also rejected by the army.
1.5 million refugees in Rafah
After the war began on October 7th, numerous civilians from the north of the Gaza Strip fled to the south. According to the UN, more than 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge in the city of Rafah alone on the border with Egypt. Despite international criticism, Israel is planning a ground offensive in Rafah and describes the city as the last remaining stronghold of the radical Islamic Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented major attack on Israel on October 7th, in which, according to Israeli information, around 1,170 people were killed and around 250 others were kidnapped as hostages in the Gaza Strip.
Since then, Israel has taken massive military action in the Gaza Strip. According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, which cannot be independently verified, more than 33,700 people have been killed so far.