IDF Extends Hours Of Gaza Evacuation Corridor, As Thousands Of Palestinians Flee South

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said an evacuation corridor in Gaza for people fleeing the north of the territory will be open between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. local time on Thursday.

Thousands of people fled northern Gaza on Wednesday, traveling miles on foot as Israel intensifies its ground and air campaign in the battered enclave.

An IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that 50,000 people evacuated northern Gaza on Wednesday.

Streams of people – women, children, the elderly and disabled – made their way down Salah Eddin Street, one of the two north-south highways in Gaza, along the IDF evacuation corridor.

It was the fifth day in a row that the IDF opened an evacuation window, and numbers of people fleeing south have increased each day.

The UN said 2,000 had fled south on Sunday, rising to 15,000 on Tuesday. The Israeli government said 50,000 Gazans travelled via the evacuation corridor Wednesday. That number could not be independently verified, but a CNN journalist at the scene said the numbers leaving were larger than on Tuesday.

Israel has been ramping up its offensive inside Gaza, following the October 7 attacks that left 1,400 people in Israel dead.

The IDF has been bombarding Gaza for weeks, saying it hit 14,000 terrorist targets in the densely packed territory.

Thursday’s six-hour window equates to 3 a.m. ET to 9 a.m. ET. The evacuation corridors have been open several times this week within a four-hour window.

“The northern Gaza Strip area is considered a fierce combat zone and time is running out to evacuate it. Join hundreds of thousands who have responded to calls and moved south in recent days,” Adraee said.

Humanitarian groups warned in October that the Israeli military’s evacuation order of Palestinians in northern Gaza violates international law.

Source: CNN