Images of distressed families walking south have been evocative of what Palestinians call the catastrophe of 1948

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Umm Ghadeer’s earliest memories are of the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948 in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel. She was three years old. Last month she was forced to abandon her home all over again, fleeing Shejaiya, a neighbourhood of Gaza City, after the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas.

“I cried very hard because I relived the experience of displacement when we fled our homes in 1948. We fled. Some people were walking on the streets, some in cars, some screaming, some crying. We lost so many people,” she said. “So many awful things happened in 1948. I am now scared of the same thing.”

The raid on al-Shifa hospital by Israeli forces forced out thousands of patients and medical staff

In the early hours of Saturday morning, over piles of concrete and rubble, crowds of doctors and patients walked miles through the destroyed streets of Gaza City, forced to evacuate on foot from what remained of its hospitals. Medics said they feared leaving critically ill patients behind in a city now largely reduced to rubble and overtaken by Israeli forces, where hospitals had been operating without power, fuel, water or food.

“It’s basically hell on earth,” said William Schomburg, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, describing what remained of life inside the city.

Fears mount for Gaza refugees as nowhere is deemed safe for civilians in effort to destroy Hamas

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Airstrikes on crowded UN shelters in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp killed more than 80 people on Saturday, as Israeli plans to expand operations into south Gaza deepened fears for hundreds of thousands of civilians who have sought refuge there.

Underlining the reminder that there is nowhere safe for Gaza’s civilians, an airstrike outside the southern town of Khan Younis killed at least 26 people in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Apartment block bombed, killing 26, in area civilians were urged to flee to for their safety

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Israel bombed an apartment block in southern Gaza early on Saturday, killing 26 people, soon after announcing plans to intensify operations in areas where the Israeli military had told civilians to flee for their safety.

In the north, a column of medics, patients and refugees trudged out of al-Shifa hospital, the biggest in Gaza, where Israeli troops spent a fourth day searching for evidence of a Hamas command node it claimed was buried below the wards.