In the early hours of Monday, Deir al-Balah City in the central of the war-torn coastal enclave, long considered a "safe zone", was engulfed by fire and smoke as Israeli warplanes unleashed a wave of strikes across the city's southern and western outskirts.
Speaking to The New Arab, Palestinian residents in the populated territory described the night as one of the most terrifying since Israel's war began.
"We believed [the war] was over," Umm Arkan, a displaced mother of five, told TNA. She crouched under a worn, torn tarpaulin in what had become her family's fourth shelter.
"It started after midnight. We had just blown out the small candle in our tent when the ground began to shake. Bombs fell one after the other. My children screamed, the tent shook, and I had no idea whether to flee or cover them," the 40-year-old woman, who lost more than 20 kilograms of weight due to starvation, recalled.
Her youngest son—Arkan—cried out, and asked her, "Mama, do they want to kill us?" She has not had any response to him. She just cried as she does not know if they will survive.
"My children were sleeping on bags of clothes, no mattresses, no blankets. The only thing around us was darkness, fear, and the sound of explosions," she lamented.
Above them, Israeli drones buzzed. Minutes later, loudspeakers attached to them issued evacuation orders. Residents scrambled into the night.
"I do not believe that we survived once again," Umm Arkan said, adding that "once the sun rose, my husband and I decided to leave the territory immediately to [at least] protect our children."
Evacuation to nowhere
On Sunday noontime, Israeli drones had dropped leaflets and issued evacuation messages to residents of multiple blocks in southwestern Deir al-Balah, including Blocks 130, 132-134, 136-139, and 2351, directing them to flee westward toward the al-Mawasi area near Khan Younis.
For many, this marked yet another forced displacement. "At first, I thought it was a rumour, but then people began shouting, running, grabbing what they could. We followed, not knowing where to go. Khan Younis is in ruins, and al-Mawasi is a desert," Umm Mohammed, another displaced woman from Deir al-Balah, told TNA.
Blocks in Deir al-Balah, which are currently under evacuation, had become temporary homes for dozens of thousands of families who had previously fled the destruction in Gaza City, Rafah and Khan Younis. They had been told those zones were humanitarian safe zones. Now, even those assurances had collapsed.
In a cramped alley behind Deir al-Balah's central market, Ibrahim Khalil sat with his mother and six children.
"We were displaced from Khan Younis. We built a tent here beside a mosque. Now we're told to move again. Where to? North? It's gone. Rafah? Flattened. Mawasi? Overrun," the 49-year-old father of six told TNA.
His children, he said, had spent the night crying, unable to sleep. "We lay on bare ground with bags of old clothes. The bombs woke us, and fear didn't let us sleep again," he said.
Now, Khalil is searching for another place to escape to, but he hasn't found anything yet.
Families of Umm Arkan and Khalil were among hundreds of others who had taken to the roads.
Entire families pushed handcarts, carried pots and pans, jugs of water, and worn-out shoes, their lives packed and repacked in fragments. Women pulled children by the arms, whispering to themselves, "Not again."
Children clung to their mothers, wide-eyed, tearful. Elderly men pulled wooden carts, according to locals.
Abu Rami, a displaced man from Deir al-Balah, walked barefoot along the coastal road, his daughter on his shoulders. "We don't know where we're going. We're just walking," he lamented.
Some attempted to reach the already-overcrowded al-Mawasi zone, though many were too exhausted to continue. Others camped along Gaza's battered central coastal road, hoping for a pause in the violence.
"There's a pattern [...] Bombings. Evacuation leaflets. Then tanks. They did it in Khan Younis, they did it in Rafah. Now it's Deir al-Balah's turn," Abdul Karim al-Namrouti, a displaced man who had found shelter near an abandoned school, told TNA.
His words echoed a widely-held fear: that the intensifying Israeli bombardment is paving the way for a ground invasion of the central Gaza Strip.
Mounting civilian toll
Israeli Public Radio suggested that the military's latest operations in central Gaza may be tied to stalled negotiations in Qatar over a prisoner swap with Hamas.
Earlier reports in the Israeli media claimed the army had avoided operating in Deir al-Balah due to concerns that captives could be held in the area.
But on Saturday night, as bombs rained down on the territory, the families of Israeli prisoners issued a joint statement questioning the military's strategy.
"Who will guarantee our children's safety?" they asked. "We demand clarity from the prime minister and the army."
Meanwhile, Palestinian health officials say they are overwhelmed. The Ministry of Health reported over 59,000 people killed since the war began, a majority of them women and children, and more than 140,000 injured.
At Al-Aqsa Hospital, the last semi-operational hospital in the Deir al-Balah area, ambulances lined up through the night. Most of the wounded were children.
Khalil al-Diqran, the spokesperson of al-Aqsa hospital, told TNA, "We are at breaking point. We're out of beds, out of medicine, out of staff. If a ground offensive starts, we will collapse completely. We won't be able to treat even the smallest injuries."