A long line of thousands of Palestinians fled on foot from northern Gaza Wednesday — families, children and older adults, crying babies — carrying only what they could take in their arms or on their backs.

They were seen in Associated Press video walking down Gaza’s main north-south highway, heeding the Israeli military’s orders to evacuate during a five-hour window as its troops battled Hamas militants deep inside Gaza City. 

Some evacuees were pushing relatives in wheelchairs, with one older adult wheeled down the road in a hand truck.

Abeer Akeila left her home in Gaza city after relentless strikes forced all her neighbors to flee southward. She said life in the city has become increasingly difficult amid dwindling water and food supplies.

“There was shelling and bombardment overnight,” she said. “We didn’t have food or drinking water ... They struck the bakeries. There is no life in Gaza.”

About 15,000 people fled northern Gaza on Tuesday — triple the number that left Monday — according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Many of the people walking south are refugees or their descendants who fled or were expelled from their homes in what is now Israel in 1948.