Those making the journey on Sunday hoped to cross a military checkpoint on al-Rashid Street, south of Gaza City, but the Israeli army said that reports the route was open were “not true”.

On the other side, desperate families waited for their loved ones in the rubble of the battered main city in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Mahmoud Awdeh said he was waiting for his wife, who has been in the southern city of Khan Younis since the start of the war on October 7.

“She told me over the phone that people are leaving the southern part and heading to the north,” Awdeh said.

“She told me she’s waiting at the checkpoint until the army agrees to let her head to the north,” he added, hoping she would be able to cross safely.

During the day rumours also spread that the Israeli army was allowing women, children and men over 50 to go to the north, a claim the army denied.

Elsewhere in Gaza, the fighting continued on Sunday after Iran launched a huge drone and missile attack on Israel overnight.

Iran’s first-ever direct assault on Israeli territory came in retaliation for a suspected Israeli strike on Tehran’s consulate in the Syrian capital that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including two generals, on April 1.

But in the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, some Palestinians were underwhelmed by Iran’s attack on Israel.

“The Iranian response came so late, after 190 days of war,” said Khaled al-Nems. “You can see our suffering. Their response is too little too late.”