by JNS Staff
"Not only are they not afraid of us, but many of them are on our side," said an IDF medic about Palestinians evacuating to safe zones in the Strip.
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Hamas terrorists in Gaza City, Sept. 21, 2022. Photo by Attia Muhammed/Flash90. |
Palestinian civilians trying to evacuate intense fighting in the northern Gaza Strip are being shot by Hamas terrorists trying to prevent them from leaving, an Israel Defense Forces medic said on Monday.
Cpl. Shai Gilboa, a medic in the IDF’s 9th Battalion, who was photographed in Jabaliya tending to a Gazan woman with a facial injury, told Israel’s Channel 12 in an interview that Hamas is now resorting to gunfire to prevent Palestinian civilians from heeding Israeli orders to evacuate to designated safe zones during the renewed fighting.
“Our battalion went into action to exert as much military pressure as possible on Hamas terrorists, who held the civilian population in the area and forbade them from evacuating to a safe area,” Gilboa said.
During the clashes, she noted, terrorists in the area opened fire and wounded some of the Gazans who were trying to flee.
“The wounded came to us and we provided them with first aid in the field, which mostly entailed stopping the bleeding,” she said.
The injured civilians were then evacuated from the area and directed toward “local medical forces” for further treatment.
In the interview, Gilboa said that the language barrier was one of several reasons that interactions between Israeli troops and the local population was limited.
“But they smile at us; they wave at us,” she said, “and they curse Hamas in front of us. Not only are they not afraid of us, but many of them are on our side.”
The IDF said that thousands of Palestinian civilians have adhered to the military’s calls to evacuate Jabaliya amid a renewed military offensive aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping in the area.
The evacuations were taking place despite the Hamas-run Interior Ministry ordering civilians earlier this month to ignore the instructions to relocate to other safer areas in the Strip.
Hamas routinely uses civilians as human shields.
Last week, the Israeli military said that Hamas terrorists were preventing Palestinian civilians in Jabaliya from evacuating to humanitarian zones amid the military operation in the area, and released a recording with a local resident who reported that the terror group was beating those who tried to leave.
“The problem is that when we follow the army’s instructions and try to go, there are people who come out against us and start hitting us with sticks, telling us ‘Go back, go back,’” the Gaza resident said in the recording.
Thousands of Hamas members are believed to be hiding among tens of thousands of residents in the area.
JNS Staff
Source: https://www.jns.org/hamas-shooting-palestinians-seeking-to-flee-gaza-fighting/
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