Palestinians were killed on Friday by explosions while fleeing Gaza City on a designated evacuation corridor, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, citing “initial reports.” There are conflicting accounts of when a window committed to by the Israel Defense Forces for safe evacuations is in place.
said the Israeli military opened a corridor between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the window was “usually” open between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., speaking in a live briefing on Friday on X, formerly Twitter. “Several explosions” about 3 p.m. along the passage earmarked by the IDF, the Salah al-Din Road thoroughfare, killed and injured evacuees,
said. It did not specify the cause of the explosions and The Washington Post could not immediately verify the account. A spokesperson for Al Aqsa Hospital said six dead and 53 injured from the blasts were brought in. An estimated 30,000 people fled southward through the corridor opened by the Israeli military on Friday,
said. Conricus said in Friday’s briefing that the IDF had “created a window of opportunity” for people to leave toward the south “in relative safety” while “monitoring, of course, their activity, to see if there is any Hamas activity.” The IDF told The Post on Friday that it was checking the report of explosions on Salah al-Din Road.