CAIRO: Some 300 Palestinians were killed, mostly children and women, while 800 others were injured in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, according to the health ministry in the coastal enclave.

Gaza authorities said more than 2,200 people have been killed — a quarter of them children — and nearly 10,000 wounded from Israeli air strikes and shelling. Rescue workers searched desperately for survivors of nighttime air raids.

Israel has subjected Gaza to the most intense bombardment it has ever seen, putting the enclave, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, under total siege and destroying much of its infrastructure.

This was in response to a massive attack by Hamas fighters who stormed through Israeli towns eight days ago on Oct. 7, shooting men, women and children and seizing hostages in the worst attack on civilians in the country's history.

Some 1,300 people were killed in the unexpected onslaught, which shook the country because of horrifying mobile phone video footage and reports from medical and emergency services of atrocities in the towns and kibbutzes that were overrun.

As Israeli troops prepared on Sunday for a ground assault on the Hamas-controlled enclave, officials said some one million people had reportedly left their homes thus far.

The Israeli military on Friday told residents of the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which includes the enclave's biggest settlement, Gaza City, to move south immediately. On Saturday, it said it would guarantee the safety of Palestinians fleeing on two main roads until 4 p.m. (1300 GMT). Troops were massing as the deadline passed.

Hamas officials, on the other hand, told people not to leave and said roads out are unsafe.

Some residents said they would not leave, remembering the "Nakba," or "catastrophe," when many Palestinians were forced from their homes during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel's creation.