Zero hour in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli ultimatum to evacuate its northern part expired at 8 last night. The ultimatum given by the Israeli authorities for the evacuation of the Gaza hospital has also expired.

Ground forces have already begun to advance, and Israeli army forces during their advance into the Strip have found bodies of missing Israeli citizens, according to a report today in the digital edition of the Jerusalem Post.

The paper said the bodies were found last night as the 7th Brigade advanced towards the border.

The number of bodies is not specified. The brigade, according to the publication, surrounded the area, found the bodies and transported them to Israeli territory.

Israel’s military said it carried out its first ground operations in the Gaza Strip yesterday, where a large-scale offensive is expected to eliminate the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. According to his representative, the aim was to “clear” areas “of terrorists and weapons”.

On his part its military arm Hamas – the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades – announced that 13 of the at least 150 hostages it took in Israel were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. He stated that among them were foreigners, without specifying their nationalities. There has been no confirmation from Chahal, the Israeli army, which said it would investigate this information.

The first land operations began

The Israeli infantry on Friday carried out its first local ground operations in the Gaza Strip, which has been completely blockaded and has been under shelling for days, a fact that demonstrates that the major ground operation promised by the Benjamin Netanyahuwill not be delayed much longer.

Israel has called up up to 360,000 reservists after Saturday’s attack by hundreds of Hamas gunmen.

Army spokesman Vice Admiral Daniel Haggari said the soldiers, backed by tanks, launched attacks on groups of Palestinians firing rockets into Israeli territory while seeking intelligence to identify hostages held by Hamas.

Earlier Friday, Israel gave more than 1 million Palestinians living in the northern half of Gaza a 24-hour deadline to flee to the south. Several thousand residents of Gaza City made their way south, but it is impossible to make an accurate estimate of their numbers. Many others said they have no plans to leave.

“Death is better than flight,” 20-year-old Mohammad said as he stood on a street in front of the rubble of a building bombed earlier by the Israeli air force near the center of Gaza.

“Stay in your homes”

The message could be heard from the mosques: “Stay in your homes. Stay on your land.”

“We are telling the people of northern Gaza and Gaza City to stay in their homes,” Eyad Al Bozom, a spokesman for Hamas’ interior ministry, told a news conference.

According to Gaza authorities, 70 people were killed and 200 injured as the Israeli army hit cars and trucks transporting people from the north of the enclave to the south. Reuters was unable to verify this information for other reasons.

The United Nations, the WHO, many non-governmental organizations and countries such as Saudi Arabia, they refused evacuation and they warned that disaster was imminent if such a large number of people were forced to flee in such a short space of time. They also called for the siege of the enclave to be lifted to allow humanitarian aid to pass through.

The situation in Gaza has reached a “dangerously low point”, he warned UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. “We urgently need humanitarian access to get fuel, food and water to those in need. Even wars have rules,” he stressed.

THE White House spokesman John Kirby commented that such a massive evacuation is a “difficult matter” but Washington is not questioning Israel’s decision to call on civilians to leave. “We understand what they’re trying to do and why — they’re trying to isolate the civilian population from Hamas, which is their real goal,” he told MSNBC.

THE Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken earlier yesterday that the displacement of Gaza’s Palestinians would be a second “Nakba”, a repeat of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee the lands that now make up Israel. Most Gazans are descendants of those refugees.

Currently Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, is blockaded and there is no way out. Israel has imposed a total blockade and Egypt, which borders the enclave, has refused to open the Rafah border crossing to fleeing civilians.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, protesters exchanged fire with Israeli security forces and Palestinian officials said 11 people were killed.

There are also fears of hostilities spreading to new fronts, such as that of Lebanon, where a Reuters cameraman was killed and six other journalists were injured earlier yesterday. Reuters reported that an Israeli shell hit a Lebanese army post on the border, and the Israeli military claimed it opened fire in response to an infiltration by gunmen, which later turned out to be due to a false alarm.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations has promised to investigate what happened in that area and led to the journalist’s death. “We always try to avoid civilian casualties. Obviously we would never want to hit or kill a journalist doing his job, said Gilad Erdan.

With information from APE-MPE