Satellite imagery shows the mass displacement of Palestinians as the Israeli military launched its intense effort to take total control of Gaza City.
Vast tent encampments across the Sheik Radwan neighborhood, northwest of the city center, almost completely emptied out in the first few weeks of September as residents fled the operation and headed south to what the Israeli military is calling a designated humanitarian zone.
Israeli tanks and troops have pushed into the city in recent days, backed by a deadly aerial bombing campaign. Internet and phone lines appeared to have been cut across the enclave, the Palestinian Telecommunications Company said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on reports of a blackout.
And while many said they had no choice but to stay put in Gaza City despite the ground offensive, hundreds of thousands fled — many on their latest round of displacement in this war.
In one image taken just north of Al-Furqan Mosque in Sheik Radwan on Sept. 2, at least 250 tents are visible. By Sept. 15, fewer than 50 remain.
An area previously used as a parking lot for the neighborhood market housed nearly 200 tents on Sept. 2. By Sept. 16, they had all disappeared.
A third refugee camp, on Salah Khalaf Street, had over 125 tents on Sept. 2. By Sept. 15, they were all gone, too.
Drone footage circulating on social media on Wednesday and geolocated by NBC News to Sheik Radwan showed multiple explosions as tanks drove through the neighborhood.
Cars and carts loaded with people’s belongings filled Al-Rashid Road, which runs along the coast of Gaza, at dawn on Thursday.
But aid groups have warned that conditions in the south are also dire, with famine spreading throughout the enclave and supplies of food and medicine scarce.
“We are searching for a place, and we can’t find any,” one woman, Maysa Kamal Gaber Nasar, said as she carried a baby, her family’s belongings scattered on the ground by a cart.
Her family had fled Gaza City south to Khan Younis, where they’ve been trying to find shelter for more than three days.
“They told us, ‘It’s safe, it’s safe’,” she said. “But there is nothing.”