MUSCAT/GAZA: Sayyid Badr bin Hamad al Busaidy, Foreign Minister, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, reviewed, via phone call, the dangerous situation and the developments currently taking place in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories, on Saturday.
The foreign ministers of the Sultanate of Oman and the United States of America (USA) voiced concern over the ongoing escalation which is affecting civilians in Gaza, stressing the importance to reach a truce in order to open corridors and air spaces for urgently-needed humanitarian aid and to re-operate water and power stations.
During the phone conversation, Sayyid Badr explained that violence generates extremism, hence the international community is facing a legal and moral responsibility to push forward towards achieving a just and comprehensive peace for the Palestinian cause and to restore the legitimate Palestinian right to end the illegal Israeli occupation.
GROUND ASSAULT
Thousands of Palestinians fled the north of the Gaza Strip on Saturday from the path of an expected Israeli ground assault, while Israel pounded the area with more air strikes and said it kept two roads open to let people escape.
Israeli forces have since put the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, under a total siege and bombarded it with unprecedented air strikes. Gaza authorities say more than 2,200 people have been killed, a quarter of them children, and nearly 10,000 wounded.
Israel had given the population of the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which includes the enclave's biggest settlement Gaza City, until Saturday morning to move south.
As that deadline approached, it said it would guarantee the safety of Palestinians fleeing on two main roads until 4:00 pm (1300 GMT). The new deadline expired with no immediate announcement from either side of any change in the situation. Troops were massing around the Gaza Strip, "getting ready for the next stage of operations," military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said.
NOT SAFE
Hamas has told people not to leave and says roads out are unsafe. It says dozens of people had been killed in strikes on cars and trucks carrying refugees on Friday, which Reuters could not independently verify.
In Gaza City's Tel Al Hawa neighbourhood, in the area Israel ordered evacuated, warplanes bombed a residential area during the night hitting several houses, according to residents who took refuge at the nearby Al Quds hospital and planned to flee south in the morning.
"We lived a night of horror. Israel punished us for not wanting to leave our home. Is there brutality worse than this?," a father of three said by telephone from the hospital, declining to give his name for fear of reprisals.
"I was never going to leave, I prefer to die and not leave, but I can’t see my wife and children die before my eyes."
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had received an Israeli order to evacuate the hospital by 4:00 pm, but would not do so because it had a humanitarian duty to keep providing services to the sick and wounded.
In Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israeli planes struck a four-storey building overnight, neighbours rushed to rescue people.
A Gaza journalist filmed an ambulance crew searching for survivors of a nighttime air strike. A paramedic could be seen walking into an alley lit by a headlamp when a huge flash from another strike burst in front of him. Medics raced into ambulances and sped off as planes roared above. One injured medic screamed: "My eyes! My eyes!"
ONLY ROUTE
The only route out of Gaza not under Israeli control is a checkpoint with Egypt at Rafah. Egypt officially says its side is open, but traffic has been halted for days because of Israeli strikes.
A senior US State Department official said the United States was working to open the crossing on Saturday to let some people out, and had been in touch with Palestinian-Americans who want to leave Gaza. Washington later said it had told its citizens to try to reach the crossing.
The United Nations says so many people cannot be safely moved inside the besieged enclave without causing a humanitarian disaster.
International aid groups and major powers have pleaded with Israel to set up safe zones in Gaza where thousands struggled on Saturday to get out of the north of the Palestinian territory, under threat of attack.
With thousands of Israeli troops massed around Gaza's borders, uncertainty over when Israel could launch a ground operation in reprisal for deadly raids.
"We fear an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe," said Ivan Karakashian of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Israel on Friday warned 1.1 million people to evacuate northern Gaza.
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