A donkey-pulled car passes in front of the Al-Faruq mosque, levelled by Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on a foggy day on February 25, 2024, amid continuing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories: Dire food shortages sent hundreds of Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza on Sunday as Israel's war against Hamas raged on despite stuttering efforts towards a ceasefire.
Desperate families in the north of the besieged war zone have been forced to scavenge for food as fighting and looting have stopped humanitarian aid trucks from reaching the devastated area.
Hundreds fled northern Gaza Sunday and headed south whichever way the could, walking down garbage-strewn roads between the blackened shells of bombed-out buildings, said an AFP correspondent.
"I came on foot from north Gaza," said one of them, Samir Abd Rabbo, 27, who arrived with his one-year-old daughter at the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.
"I can't describe the kind of starvation spreading there."
Without milk, he said, he had tried to feed his baby girl bread made from animal feed, which she was unable to digest. "Our only hope is God, there is nobody else to help."
Israeli forces meanwhile kept striking targets across the Palestinian territory and battling Hamas militants in heavy urban combat centred on the southern city of Khan Yunis.
The army said "troops killed a number of terrorists and located weapons" and "apprehended terrorists who had attempted to escape by hiding amongst the civilians".
Close to the main battlefront, in the far-southern Rafah region, alarm has grown among 1.4 million Palestinians of a looming ground invasion feared to bring more mass civilian casualties.
The war started by the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel has ground on well into a fifth month and sent the death toll rapidly surging towards 30,000, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
