‘One would rather die with one’s family’: some see no point in fleeing Gaza.

From the explosions outside, Mr. Hamda could not properly judge whether the Israelis were really close. In his apartment it all sounded the same: boom after boom, scaring the children, whether it was from airstrikes, artillery fire or something else.

Their nerves were torn to shreds by the most intense night of Israeli bombardment yet, their information limited by a lack of electricity and reliable internet. Mr. Hamda and many others in Gaza City could only conclude this: the Israelis were there, and they, the civilians, had no good choices.

“You leave or you die,” Mr. Hamda said. “These are the options.”

He added: “I am very scared for my children. I don’t want them to experience this.”

Israel has been warning for weeks that civilians in northern Gaza, including those in Gaza City, must evacuate south to avoid violence.

Many did so, only to return home after Israeli bombs hit the southern neighborhoods where they were hiding. Others never left because they couldn’t afford the increasingly expensive taxi ride south or, like Mr Hamda, were convinced it wasn’t safer in the south.

“If they invade on site, we will die at home,” Bilal Assabti, a 30-year-old unemployed father of two young children, said by telephone Monday evening. “We don’t have anyone in the south. Where do we have to go?”

That grim determination held strong for some in Gaza City on Monday, even as they heard Israeli forces advancing nearby. After all, some pointed out that Salah Al-Din Road, where the video appeared to show Israeli forces firing at a civilian car, was the main escape route to the south.

The video shows the car driving north as it approaches an Israeli military position. He is hit as he turns around, and the explosion appears to push him off the road.

The person filming the car immediately makes a U-turn. “Go back! Go back!” someone shouts as he passes another vehicle on the road.

The New York Times has confirmed that the video was shot this morning south of Gaza City on Salah Al-Din Road. The Times also identified several armored vehicles at an Israeli military position at the site of the incident.

Youssef Al Saifi, 28, who filmed the video, said in an interview that he also saw Israeli forces shooting at a bus.

Asked about the video, the Israeli army’s chief spokesman, Deputy Admiral Daniel Hagari, said he would not specify the location of the Israeli forces.

After his brother told him about the tanks on Salah Al-Din Road, Jamal Azzam, a nurse at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital south of Gaza City, left the hospital and went to his home in the city. “Northern Gaza is now cut off from southern Gaza,” he said. “Who can go back to the hospital now?”

Mr Assabti has ruled out leaving even as the invasion draws closer. Unable to pay rent elsewhere or find a relative or friend to stay with in the South, he has exhausted all options, he said.

At home, his family can use the bathroom without having to queue and he can sleep in a bed with enough blankets. They can get water from a nearby water desalination plant that runs on solar panels, although they survive only on supplies of canned food.

“We’ve had thirty years of suffering,” he said exhaustedly. ‘One prefers to die together with his family.’

Another Gaza City resident, an Al Jazeera correspondent named Youmna ElSayed, told the network in an live call On Monday, she said her husband had received a call from the Israeli army telling them to evacuate south “because it is going to be very dangerous in the area where you are.”

When her husband told the caller that they had heard of Israeli tanks on the main road that could take them south, Ms. ElSayed said, the caller said he could not tell them which streets to take, and that they would have to figure it out for themselves . .

“They call us directly and warn us and tell us to leave and evacuate now, but the bombing is relentless,” Ms ElSayed told Al Jazeera.

As she spoke, she was interrupted every minute by thunderous booms.

Christoph KoettlAnd Neil Collier reporting contributed.