Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and ceasefire talks News: Live updates

Hamas had announced it had accepted a ceasefire proposal from Qatar and Egypt, leading many Gazans to believe a ceasefire was imminent. Their joy was short-lived; It quickly became clear that Hamas was not talking about the same proposal that Israel had supported days earlier, saying that the two sides remained far apart.

Instead, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets in eastern Rafah urging people to flee and move to a so-called humanitarian zone in the north, while the Israeli military bombed the area. Health officials in the Gaza Strip say dozens have been killed since Israel's incursion into parts of Rafah this week.

“We thought a ceasefire was possible that day,” said Ms al-Wakeel, 48, who was helping the aid group World Central Kitchen prepare hot meals.

She and her family had sought refuge near Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, in an area hit by Israeli airstrikes and ground fighting. The director of the hospital, Dr. Marwan al-Hams said Monday that it had received the bodies of 26 people killed by Israeli fire and treated 50 wounded. The hospital was evacuated the next day.

So instead of returning home, Ms. al-Wakeel, her husband, her 11 children and other relatives found a semi-trailer on Tuesday evening that would transport them and their belongings, including suitcases of clothes, pots, pans and tents, for 2,500 shekels – about 670 $ – looking for another place to stay.

They left Rafah around midnight and headed north, along with hundreds of tuk-tuks, trucks, cars and donkey carts full of other displaced families and their belongings.

“It was a scary night, the truck was moving slowly due to the heavy load,” she said.

Once they left Rafah, they made frequent stops at schools and other buildings, desperately searching for a clear space where they could take shelter. But every place was full.

Others also found no space and Ms al-Wakeel saw many people sleeping on the side of the road, next to the belongings they had fled with.

At a UN school in Deir El-Balah, a young man suggested staying overnight in an empty concrete building with no windows or doors that belonged to the Hamas-led government's Ministry of Social Development.

“It seemed like a dangerous place,” she said, adding that they had been told that a woman and her daughter had previously been killed by an Israeli missile in one of the building's rooms.

But they were too afraid to wander any further in the darkness and decided to spend the night there and find a safer place the next morning.

“I am so sad and disappointed about what happened to Rafah as it was stable for us there,” she said. “We have spent so much time setting up new places and we feel depressed and so exhausted because we have to repeat the same suffering.”

Saeda al-Nemnem, 42, had given birth to twins less than a month before Israel dropped leaflets on their shelter in Rafah, ordering them to leave the country. Her family, also displaced from Gaza City, sent a relative to look for a truck that could take them north despite heavy Israeli airstrikes at the time.

The relative, Mohammed al-Jojo, was killed by an Israeli attack on the tractor he was riding, she said.

He “was killed trying to get us out of this area to a safer place,” she said. “I feel like I caused his death.”

Despite the dangers of traveling, it was not safer to stay where they were in Rafah.

On the harrowing journey to the town of Khan Younis, where she and her family of eight took refuge in a room next to the main building of Al-Aqsa University, they could hear what appeared to be explosions of Israeli bombs, rockets and artillery, she said.

“My children’s heartbeat was so high I could feel it,” she said. It was the heaviest bombardment she had ever heard, “so close and so frightening for me and my children,” she said.