'We were forced to run, losing our will to live': escape from Gaza City

Remnants of blighted lives piled in trucks, the air acrid with burnt oil, sewage by the roadside and piercing screams.

- Ruth Michaelson and Aseel Mousa

A column of vehicles left Gaza City piled high with mattresses, plastic jerrycans and chairs. Tens of thousands of people crammed into cars. Some rode on roofs or hung on to the sides of trucks. Others picked up what they could carry and walked.

"This was about survival. But it's like there was a weight bearing down on people, knowing that they had to say goodbye to their homes," said Hassan. His sister and their elderly parents rode with him inside a truck full of their belongings: there was so little space that his brother endured the hours-long journey on the roof, or clinging to the back of the truck, alongside a pile of boxes, as he wept.

Still Hassan was relieved that he had finally found somewhere for them to go. He is considered fortunate. His job with the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees means he can afford to pay for a roof over his head - rents are soaring all over Gaza as hundreds of thousands flee. Hassan last spoke to The Observer two months ago to describe his struggle to survive famine. His name has been changed.

It took Hassan weeks to find an apartment in Gaza's middle area before his family could flee. He frantically called any landlord he could find. Then he struggled to find any means to transport them all south of the Gaza River.

"It was insane. They kept telling us to flee south and I wanted to. But how can we go, with no transportation, no fuel and basically no roads?" he said. At one point, Hassan grew so desperate to find a vehicle that he went out into the street in Gaza City and began trying to stop any car he could find.