On the ground in Gaza Wary soldiers look on as families flee shattered city

Gaza tabout 4pm A yesterday, a column of men, women and children moved slowly through the rubble of the city they had once called home.

- Jason Burke

Above them the blue sky was streaked with smoke. To one side the skeletal remains of houses, stripped by shellfire to their bare concrete bones. To the other, the bulldozed berms from where men of the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF) Jerusalem brigade watched warily.

Automatic weapons fire cracked some way away. A thudding bang signalled something nearer and bigger. Drones buzzed in the distance. The file moved forwards in fits and starts.

A young girl with a pink school bag, bulging with those belongings she had been able to take with her, stood in front of an old woman in a wheelchair pushed by a youth in a football shirt. A middle-aged man in brown office trousers limped behind a teenager pulling a suitcase on rollers through the shattered blocks of cement, twisted iron and refuse. Three younger children stood in a row, waiting.

Many held their identity documents high in the air as they passed through the two shipping containers used by the soldiers as a makeshift screening centre.

Through a bullhorn, a soldier shouted in Arabic: "Move along, don't push, you in the red shirt stand aside." Occasionally, the soldiers switched to Hebrew, appealing to anyone who spoke Israel's national language to make themselves known. "You will be safe. No one will touch you," the men with bullhorns shouted. The aim, said an officer, was to offer a route to safety to any hostage concealed among the thin crowd, especially children.

The IDF took the Guardian and a number of other media organisations into Gaza and, following longstanding guidelines, read this report for any sensitive military details. The Guardian was not asked to make any changes.