The more Israel warns about attack; the more civilians get desperate in Gaza  

RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA)- Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians faced a deepening struggle for food, water and safety Sunday and braced for a looming invasion.

AP reported while hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents sought to heed Israel’s order to evacuate roughly the northern half of the territory, others huddled at hospitals in the north.

Israeli forces, supported by a growing deployment of U.S. warships in the region, positioned themselves along Gaza’s border and drilled for what Israel said would be a campaign by air, land and sea to dismantle Hamas.

In Israel, pathologists and others at a military base worked through the Jewish Sabbath to identify the more than 1,300 Israelis and others killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault. The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that over 2,200 people have been killed in the territory, including 724 children and 458 women.

Israel dropped leaflets over Gaza City in the north and renewed warnings on social media, ordering more than 1 million Gaza residents to move south. The military says it is trying to clear away civilians ahead of a concentrated campaign against Hamas militants in the north, including in what it said were underground hideouts in Gaza City. Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.

The U.N. and aid groups say such a rapid exodus along with Israel’s siege of the 40-kilometer-long (25-mile-long) territory would cause untold human suffering.

The World Health Organization said the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals, including newborns in incubators and people in intensive care. Gaza’s hospitals are expected to run out of fuel for emergency generations within two days, according to the U.N., which said that that would endanger the lives of thousands of patients.

Gaza was already in a humanitarian crisis due to a growing shortage of water and medical supplies caused by the Israeli blockade, which has also forced electrical plants to shut down without fuel. With some bakeries closing, residents complained of being unable to buy bread for their children.

Israel’s evacuation directive covers an area with 1.1 million residents, about half of Gaza’s population. The Israeli military said “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians had heeded the warning and headed south. It gave Palestinians a six-hour window that ended Saturday afternoon to travel safely within Gaza along two main routes.

Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza.

Ahead of the expected ground offensive, Israelis living near the Gaza border, including residents of the town of Sderot, continued to be evacuated.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Saturday that the U.S. was moving a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean.

An Israeli airstrike near the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people and wounded another 80, Gaza health authorities said.

Most of the victims were women and children, the authorities said. Doctors from Kamal Edwan Hospital shared chaotic footage of charred and disfigured bodies.

It was not clear how many Palestinians remained in northern Gaza by Saturday afternoon, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. An estimated 1 million people have been displaced in Gaza in one week, she said.

At Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, a crowd of men, women and children that medical officials estimated at 35,000 crammed into the hospital’s lobby and bloodied hallways and under the trees on the hospital grounds, hoping the facility would be spared in the coming attack.

Basic necessities were running out because of the total siege.

The Israeli military’s evacuation order demands the territory’s entire population cram into the southern half of Gaza as Israel continues strikes, including in the south. The Hamas communications office said Israel has destroyed over 7,000 housing units so far.

The U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians expressed concern for those who could not leave, “particularly pregnant women, children, older persons and persons with disabilities.” The agency also called for Israel to not target civilians, hospitals, schools, clinics and U.N. locations.