TEL AVIV, Israel — Hundreds of thousands of people still stuck in northern Gaza will have just three hours to flee south today, Israel's military announced Saturday.
The Israeli Defense Forces announced there will be a brief three-hour window (starting 1 p.m. local time until 4 p.m.) for people trapped in northern Gaza to travel on the road to southern Gaza safely.
The Israeli military said it will "avoid hitting" this main road heading south, but emphasized that this move is in no way a cease fire.
The United Nations estimates that there could be as many 300,000 internally displaced people still stuck in northern Gaza, including Gaza City — an area Israeli forces have surrounded as part of their ground operation.
It's been about a week since Israeli troops pushed into Gaza through a ground offensive and remained in the Strip. This military effort has mostly been focused in the north and has effectively cut the strip in half, preventing aid from getting in or civilians from getting out.
This order means civilians will most likely flee to the south of Gaza, with likely nowhere else to go.
Officials in Gaza also closed the one available border crossing from Gaza into Egypt on Saturday. They said foreign passport holders will not be allowed to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt unless patients from the hospitals in Gaza City and northern Gaza are permitted to get to the crossing.
The crossing has been opened the past three days for Palestinians with foreign nationalities, or Palestinians with connections to foreign countries and foreign employers.
The list of people approved to leave Gaza today — in what would have been the fourth day for the border to be open — included more Americans.
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