GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Ahlam Ahmad, 32, fled her house in Beit Lahiya's Salatin neighborhood, in the northern Gaza Strip, after it was subjected to direct risk from the mounting number of Israeli artillery shells fired continuously and at random.
Ahlam told Al-Monitor that the shelling that hit the area came from Israeli gunboats anchored off the coast of the Gaza Strip, in the Mediterranean Sea. "In addition to artillery shelling, Israeli navy boats were sporadically targeting their missiles at our homes, thus scaring our children,” she said, adding that Israeli warplanes used other ways also to terrorize citizens in those areas — by dropping thousands of leaflets instructing people to flee and inciting them against the Palestinian resistance, thus leading to their displacement.