AILSA CHANG, HOST:
This is the 385th day of war in Gaza. For people there, it's death, not life, that feels certain. NPR correspondent Aya Batrawy and producer Anas Baba report on how Israeli military operations against Hamas are intensifying.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: This week some 20,000 people streamed out of the town of Jabalia in North Gaza traumatized and exhausted, ordered by lethal drones hovering in the sky to leave their homes after three weeks under siege. Amir Sola (ph) was one of them.
AMIR SOLA: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: He tells NPR over the phone how families like his walked more than two miles south to Gaza City past wounded people who couldn't be carried. Along the way, Sola walked past Jabalia's Indonesian hospital, besieged by an Israeli tank.
SOLA: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: He says people in the hospital cried out, water, water. But he says no one could help. The army fired on anyone who tried. Inside that hospital, a nurse sent this voice memo heard by NPR.
UNIDENTIFIED NURSE: The situation is very, very, very bad.
BATRAWY: The nurse, whose name we're not publishing for his safety, says the military has been ordering hospital staff to leave, but they refused to abandon the patients.
UNIDENTIFIED NURSE: I feel fatigue and nausea and dizziness. I didn't eat from yesterday.
BATRAWY: Outside, Sola was separated from his wife and kids.
SOLA: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: He says all males over 13 years old were taken by Israeli soldiers in order to sit in a dirt hole. Then, in groups of four, they were told to face cameras for scans. Tanks flanked them.
SOLA: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Some were detained. So was among those released hours later. Gaza Civil Defense say also at least 500 people, including doctors and aid workers have been killed in the siege but that many are still trapped under the rubble. Israel's military says its operation in Jabalia has killed and detained hundreds of Hamas militants trying to regroup and uncovered rocket launchers. Here's Israeli government spokesman David Mencer.
DAVID MENCER: These are heartbreaking images of civilians on the move. Again, we understand that fact, but, of course, it's much better to get them out of harm's way.
BATRAWY: For Sola, there is nowhere in Gaza that is out of harm's way.
SOLA: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: He's tried evacuating before but says while he was sheltering in a hospital in December, Israeli tank fire killed his 3-year-old son, Karim (ph), while he was cradling him.
SOLA: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: During this current siege, he told his wife, I wish death for us together so none of us has to mourn the other. But it's not just the north. All of Gaza has become a kill zone. In the middle and south, people despair.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Another Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced families killed 18 people, 11 of them children, on Thursday in central Gaza. Israel says it was targeting a Hamas figure inside.
BARA ALFAR: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: A teenage boy cries over the body of his niece, just 9. Bara Alfar (ph) says Jenna (ph) had left the north only six days ago after facing starvation there for this. Starve or leave. That's what some in Israel say they want.
(CROSSTALK)
BATRAWY: At rally in Israel near Gaza's border this week, settlers and senior government officials called for Palestinians to be expelled from Gaza to make way for Jewish settlements. They're hopeful the military's operations could make that happen. Aya Batrawy, NPR News, Dubai, with reporting by Anas Baba in Gaza. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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