Palestinian civilians in the southern Gazan city of Rafah voiced despair on Monday as Israel dropped fliers urging them to evacuate for their own “safety” ahead of a long-threatened ground invasion.
Israel’s army said it was instructing Palestinian families in eastern Rafah to flee in preparation for an expected ground assault on the city near Gaza’s border with Egypt.

But as many displaced people packed up their things to move yet again, authorities in Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli airstrikes were already targeting specific areas ordered evacuated in eastern Rafah.
Residents of Rafah said they emerged after a terrifying night of numerous air strikes on Rafah to find fliers falling from the sky telling them to “evacuate immediately”. Rafah resident Ammar Mohammad Abu Assem told AFP that people had also been receiving calls “telling us to evacuate”. He slammed the calls as “foolish talk” after Gaza authorities said strikes on Rafah overnight and Monday morning killed at least 26 people.

“After they bomb, they tell us to evacuate?” he said.
“We are very scared and afraid because it’s not easy to move from one place to another, from displacement to displacement,” said Hanah Saleh, 40, who had already been displaced from Tal Al-Zaatar in northern Gaza to Rafah.
“We do not know where to go,” Um Ahmed Fasef told AFP, adding that “this is the third time I have been displaced” since the war began.
Amid pouring rain, some of those sheltering in Rafah said they had begun packing up their things from the densely packed tents and preparing to leave even before Israel’s directive arrived.
“Whatever happens, my tent is ready,” a resident told AFP. Osama Al-Kahlout, of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Gaza, told AFP that the areas designated for evacuation currently shelter some 250,000 people, many of whom have already been displaced from other areas in the Gaza Strip.
Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar, 36, said he and 12 family members were in the designated evacuation area. Jazar and his family did not know what to do, he said, because the “humanitarian zone” they were told to head for “does not have enough room for us to make tents because they are (already) full of displaced people”.
“Where can we go? We do not know.”
The Israeli military spokesman told reporters that the evacuation “is part of our plans to dismantle Hamas ... we had a violent reminder of their presence and their operational abilities in Rafah yesterday”.