Israel-Gaza war: Dead bodies and tanks on road south as people flee

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."So what is this journey like?

BBC Verify has been looking at video, listening to eyewitness testimony and analysing satellite images to try to get a clearer picture.

Before the fighting started, northern Gaza was home to over one million people.

It has been heavily bombed and Israeli ground forces are now fighting Hamas there, following the group's attack on Israel on 7 October.

Salah al-Din is the main road crossing the length of Gaza and the Israeli military has told civilians to use it as an evacuation route. The road runs past Wadi Gaza, a valley the IDF uses to divide northern and southern Gaza.

The IDF has said people will be safer in southern Gaza although its air strikes there have continued.

A map of Gaza showing Salah al-Din Road, the main evaucation routes from the north to below the Wadi Gaza down south.
On Wednesday Ahmed Zeyadah told a local journalist filming for the BBC about his journey. He had travelled from his home in the district of al-Nasr in the north.

Carrying his toddler, he said, "I am so tired. We don't know what to do, we don't know where to go. To whom do we turn? To whom do we say: Come and save us."

Mahmoud Ghazzaawi fled his home in al-Zeitoun in northern Gaza because of the number of attacks.

He said he left his home at midday and had been walking for five hours. He also said he did not know where to go.

"There are martyrs [dead people] thrown on the ground, may God have mercy on them," he said."...