GAZA: Thousands of Gazans flooded the coast road north on Sunday after hearing that several people managed to cross a closed checkpoint towards Gaza City, despite the Zionist entity denying it was open. Several Gazans said they came under attack on the route and AFP footage showed people ducking for cover.

The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said Zionist forces “bomb(ed) displaced Palestinians as they were trying to return to the north of Gaza Strip through Al Rasheed street.” Wafa shared a video on X showing people running away from a blast. Nour, a displaced Gazan, told AFP: “When we arrived at the (Zionist) checkpoint, they would let women pass or stop them, but they shot at men so we had to return, we didn’t want to die.”

An AFP journalist saw mothers holding their children’s hands and families piling onto donkey carts with their luggage as they made the journey. They hoped to cross a military checkpoint on Al-Rasheed Road south of Gaza City, but the Zionist army told AFP that reports the route was open were “not true”. On the other side, desperate families waited for their loved ones in the rubble of the battered main city in the Palestinian territory.

Mahmoud Awdeh said he was waiting for his wife, who has been in the southern city of Khan Yunis since the start of the war on Oct 7. “She told me over the phone that people are leaving the southern part and heading to the north,” Awdeh said. “She told me she’s waiting at the checkpoint until the army agrees to let her head to the north,” he said, hoping she would be able to cross safely.

During the day rumors also spread that the Zionist army was allowing women, children and men over 50 to go to the north, a claim denied by the army. Since the Zionist assault on Gaza, the army has besieged the territory, telling Gazans to leave some areas and preventing them from moving across the narrow strip. More than 1.5 million Palestinians have taken refuge in the southern city Rafah, according to the United Nations.

Elsewhere in Gaza the fighting continued on Sunday after Iran launched a huge drone and missile attack on the Zionist entity overnight. But in Rafah on Sunday, Palestinians told AFP they were underwhelmed by Iran’s attack on the Zionist entity. “The Iranian response came so late, after 190 days of war,” Khaled Al Nems told AFP. “You can see our suffering. Their response is too little too late,” he added.

Walid Al Kurdi, a displaced Palestinian living in Rafah, said that “Iran’s attack on (the Zionist entity) is not really our business”. “They only thing we care about is going back to our homes,” he said. “We are waiting for the coming 48 hours to see if (the Zionist entity) responds to Iran, or if they are playing with us and want to distract attention away from Rafah.” The Zionist entity has said it plans to send ground forces into Rafah to eradicate remaining Hamas fighters there. – AFP