As thousands of displaced Palestinians tried to return to their homes in northern Gaza on Sunday, Israeli troops shot into the crowd, forcing people to turn back in panic, according to an emergency worker and two people who tried to make the journey.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported that five people were killed and 23 wounded by Israeli gunfire and artillery in the encounter, on Al-Rashid Street south of Gaza City, as a crowd of Gazans headed north to their homes.
The circumstances of the deaths could not be confirmed independently, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about whether its forces opened fire on Palestinian civilians trying to cross to northern Gaza.
For months, the Israeli military has barred Palestinians who have been displaced by the war in Gaza from returning to their homes in northern Gaza. It has become a sticking point in negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
It was not clear why some Palestinians believed that Israel would not block them from returning on Sunday. But they were making the journey on a day when Iran had launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel.
More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its assault there in October, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The assault occurred in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, according to the Israeli authorities.
On Sunday morning Jamila Ibrahim, 39, said that she began hearing of some Palestinians who left early and managed to get back to the north. She later spoke with friends who were able to return north. But there were very few.
Around 10:30 a.m. she and her three children — who are between 10 and 17 — set out, joining other people on the journey.
She said there were no official notices from the Israel military, which has occupied large parts of Gaza after it launched a ground invasion, that residents would be allowed to return to their homes. It was just based on word of mouth, as well as people seeing others leaving and being encouraged to join the trek home, she said.
“Some people were scared, they didn’t know what fate they were heading to, they didn’t know what would happen,” she said. “Some were happy that they were going to return.”
Most people were on foot — carrying what little food they had or their few belongings in bags and luggage — and some paid large sums of money to go by car, trucks or donkey carts, she said. But they all took the same seaside road, heading north toward an Israeli checkpoint that has cut off southern Gaza from the north.
“There was lots of tension, lots of tension among the people,” she said. “They were scared they could be shot.”
Those who tried to cross north in the middle of the night — around 4 a.m. — managed to make it to the north, she said, based on her conversation with friends who crossed successfully.
But later that morning, by the time she and other displaced Palestinians tried to follow, Israeli forces opened fire on them, she said.
“Around 12:30 the Israelis started shooting,” she said.
Mazen Al-Harazeen, a first responder in Gaza, said Israeli forces fired weapons and he did not know how many had been killed, but he said, “There was shooting and martyrs.”
Early Sunday morning, Avichay Adraee, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F., wrote on social media that the rumors that the army was allowing residents to return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip were false.
“The I.D.F. will not allow the return of residents,” he added. “For your safety, do not approach the forces operating there.”
Nearly two million Gazans have been displaced by the war between Hamas and Israel, now in its sixth month. One of their biggest concerns is when and if they will be allowed to return to their homes, or whether they will be permanently displaced, as previous generations were.
Around 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes in 1947 and 1948 during the wars surrounding Israel’s establishment as a state.
Bilal Shbair contributed reporting.
