Thousands of Palestinians fled to southern Gaza in search of refuge on Friday after Israel warned them to evacuate before an expected ground offensive against Hamas in retaliation for the deadliest attack in Israel’s history. The Israeli military said its ground forces made raids into Gaza over the past 24 hours. “Over the past 24 hours, IDF (Israeli military) forces carried out localised raids inside the territory of the Gaza Strip to complete the effort to cleanse the area of terrorists and weaponry,” an army statement said. “During these operations, there was also an effort to locate missing persons,” it added. In the latest development, a Reuters journalist was killed and six others from AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera were wounded while working in southern Lebanon, the three news organisations said. A group of journalists from different media outlets were near Alma al-Shaab close to the border with Israel when they were caught up in cross-border shelling, one of the two wounded AFP correspondents said. “We are deeply saddened to learn that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed,” Reuters said in a statement, adding he “was part of a Reuters crew in southern Lebanon”. AFP photographer Christina Assi was with her AFP colleague video journalist Dylan Collins working in the area. Both were taken to a hospital in Tyre for treatment. Two other Reuters reporters, “Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh also sustained injuries and are seeking medical care,” Reuters said in a statement, adding it was “urgently seeking more information”. Al-Jazeera said two of their reporters were among the wounded, blaming “Israeli bombing on their vehicle”. They named them as Carmen Joukhadar and Elie Brakhya. Nearly 1,800 Gazans – including over 580 children – have been killed in waves of missile strikes on the densely populated enclave, the Palestinian health ministry said. According to Israel, Hamas took an estimated 150 Israeli, foreign and dual-national hostages back to Gaza during its initial attack. Hamas said Friday that 13 hostages had been killed in Israeli air strikes. It has previously said four hostages died in bombardments, complicating any Israeli ground offensive. Tensions meanwhile rose across the Middle East and beyond, with protests in support of the Palestinians, while Israel faced the threat of a separate confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the occupied West Bank, at least nine Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire during protests supporting Gaza, taking the toll there to 44 since Saturday, the health ministry said. The Israeli military has warned it would operate “significantly” in Gaza City in the coming days and civilians would only be able to return when another announcement was made. “Civilians of Gaza City, evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields,” the military said in a statement. “Hamas terrorists are hiding in Gaza City inside tunnels underneath houses and inside buildings populated with innocent Gazan civilians.” Hamas, on the other hand, rejected the Israeli order. The US termed it a “tall order”. “Our Palestinian people reject the threat of the occupation (Israeli) leaders and its call for them to leave their homes and flee from them to the south or Egypt,” Hamas said in a statement.”We are steadfast on our land and in our homes and our cities. There will be no displacement,” it said. In Gaza, United Nations officials said the Israeli military, whose troops are massing at the border, had told them the evacuation should be carried out “within the next 24 hours”. It later admitted it would take more time, however, and did not confirm it had set the deadline. But the United Nations described the immediate movement of some 1.1 million people – nearly half of the 2.4 million in the Gaza Strip – as “impossible”. It urgently appealed for the order to be rescinded. Aid agencies have warned mass evacuations would stretch support to the limit, as fuel, food and water dwindled due to an Israeli blockade. Hospitals are struggling to cope with the dead and wounded from the relentless bombardment, and the health system was already “at a breaking point”, the World Health Organisation said. Ashraf al-Qudra, from the Gaza health ministry, said hospitals were “starting to lose capacity” and medicine was running out. In Jordan, after a meeting with visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, King Abdullah II called for “humanitarian corridors” to be opened urgently. Elizabeth El-Nakla, the mother-in-law of Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf, said in a video from Gaza that he posted online that people had nowhere to go. “One million people no food no water, and still they are bombing them as they leave. Where are we going to put them?” she said. “This will be my last video. Everybody from Gaza is moving towards where we are,” added Nakla, who was visiting relatives in Gaza from Scotland. “May God help us.” Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas which led the offensive on Saturday, but a ground invasion of Gaza poses serious risk with Hamas holding scores of hostages kidnapped in the assault. Public broadcaster Kan said the Israeli death toll had risen to more than 1,300. The Israeli military said in a statement on Friday that it struck “750 military targets” in northern Gaza overnight, including what it claimed were Hamas tunnels, military compounds, residences of senior operatives and weapons storage warehouses. Since Saturday, it has rained 6,000 bombs on Gaza, flattening entire neighbourhoods. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said fuel powering emergency generators at hospitals in Gaza could run out within hours and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned food and fresh water were running dangerously low. “The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent, and I implore the sides to reduce the suffering of civilians,” ICRC regional director Fabrizio Carboni said. In Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis, where cemeteries were already full, dead were being buried in empty lots, like the Samour family, killed on Wednesday night in a strike that hit their house. Palestinian rescue worker Ibrahim Hamdan drove from one bomb site to another as his team tried to pull survivors from houses destroyed by the Israeli air strikes. “This war is harsh beyond imagining,” said Hamdan, who has worked through repeated wars since becoming a rescuer in 2007. “They knock down high-rise buildings on top of their residents.” Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, saying the use of such weapons puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injury. Israel’s military said it was “currently not aware of the use of weapons containing white phosphorus in Gaza”. Meanwhile, amid Israeli warplanes’ fierce bombardment on the besieged Gaza Strip for the 7th straight day, thousands of rallies were held across Pakistan to express solidarity with the Palestinian brethren on Friday. After Friday prayer, hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life took to the streets in several parts of the country and staged protest demonstrations against the Israeli brutality against the oppressed Palestinians. Massive protests were also held in rest of the world, particularly in Muslim countries, against Israeli aggression against innocent Palestinians.