Gaza evacuees return to their homes with no food no blanket

Israeli air raids and unbearable living conditions in the south and central areas of the Gaza Strip...

Two days ago some Gaza residents who began evacuating northern Gaza, following an Israeli military order, have been returning to their homes in Gaza City due to continued Israeli air raids and unbearable living conditions in the south and central areas of the Gaza Strip.

Maha Hosseini, told from Zawayda in the central Strip, where she evacuated, said three families who were sharing the home she is staying in have now returned to Gaza City.

I’m staying in a house with 70 other people,” she said, using the little charge she had left on her phone after a day with no connection to the outside world.

“We have limited water supply, we don’t have electricity, just one hour a day,” she explained.

“Actually this is our greatest fear that we run out of water. When children ask for water, we just give each of them one sip,” she said, adding that they are trying to make the one water tank they have last for as long as possible, as they don’t know if another will be available.

"We have three families that went back home today because even in this area that Israel had deemed safe, we’ve had many air raids around the house,” Hosseini said.

In the early hours of Friday morning, the Israeli military ordered more than a million people to evacuate the north of the Gaza Strip, including the densely populated Gaza City. The directive applies to almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.

Later that day, thousands of people made their way to southern Gaza in cars, trucks, and even donkey-pulled carts filled with whatever belongings they could take with them.

But people found little safety in the south and reported being crammed into the homes of family, friends and even strangers who had opened their doors to the evacuees.