70 killed in Israeli air strikes while fleeing Gaza

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes while attempting to flee the northern Gaza Strip after the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of more than a million residents, a demand that was deemed "impossible" by the UN, according to Hamas officials.

The media office of Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs the besieged Gaza Strip, said 70 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the air raids on cars leaving Gaza City in three places, according to Al Jazeera report.

There were few signs of a mass exodus, but thousands of Palestinian civilians started to flee to southern Gaza on Friday under a barrage of constant airstrikes after an Israeli military order.

The northern portion of the strip, which includes Gaza City, the most populous urban area, is home to roughly 1.1 million of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza.