People in the Gaza Strip started intensive preparations to avoid a severe humanitarian crisis in case a truce is not reached between Hamas and Israel, and the latter carries out a large-scale ground operation into the coastal enclave.

Residents here are following Israeli mass media and are concerned that Israel would enlarge its military operations and go for a ground incursion to stop the Palestinian rockets fired round the clock on Israeli cities that left fear and horror among the Israeli citizens.

When Israeli waged the three-week operation Cast Lead in early 2009, some 1,440 Palestinians and 13 Israelis killed. Therefore, if a truce is not achieved, at least hundreds in Gaza may have their lives at risk as the Israelis launched new ground assaults.

The scenes of hundreds of families leaving their homes close to the Gaza-Israeli borders have broken the heart of Um Suhail, an old Palestinian woman living in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, as she had to leave her house amid intensive Israeli airstrikes.

She decided to leave all her precious belongings and go with her family to a house of their relatives' in Gaza City's center. The family of nine, like hundreds of others, are looking for a less dangerous place.

"I feel like we are escaping from a possible death and moving to an expected death," said Suhail, as she was trying to stop her 3-year-old grandchildren in her arm crying as a result of fear.

The Gaza Strip has been under fire for six days, and by now at least 107 have been killed and over 800 wounded. Israel began its military operation on Gaza on Wednesday and carried out hundreds of intensive airstrikes on various areas all over the enclave.

Suhail, hasn't forgotten the what had happened in 2009, when she and her family left their house and returned to it after a cease-fire was reached, but only to see it turned into rubble after Israeli tanks and bulldozers destroyed it.

"I never expected that the same scene will happen that soon ... If it is my choice, I would prefer to stay in my house and die there," she said, adding "but the cries of my grandchildren had obliged me to again accept and leave."

As Israeli airstrikes kept pounding on the Gaza Strip, Abu Eyad Abu Shbak has been trying to calm down his children. He lives in an area called Izbet Abed Rabbo, a neighborhood in northern Gaza which has also been subjected to Israel's assaults in 2009.

Abu Shbak said that he immediately left the neighborhood during the first-day of the Israeli ground operation in 2009. "The first night of the ground operation was horrible, and my children insisted to leave the house immediately."

Gaza City's center is overcrowded and it is very hard for the Israeli army tanks to reach, and it is the only safe place for all the Palestinians living near the borders to refuge and stay there until the ground operation ends. Two of Abu Shbak children, 15 and 16 years old, respectively, were killed in the 2009 war.

Mohamed al-Gharabli, a 33-year-old resident of eastern Zaytoon neighborhood east of Gaza City, and a father of seven, also decided also to leave his house, which is only two km away from the borders with Israel. He said "a ground operation into Gaza will be a horrible nightmare."

"In fact there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip, but we have to leave our house for the sake of our children that we don't want them to die," al-Gharabli said, adding that "he could find a place where to stay in Gaza City's center, but it would be hard to find food and bread for my family."

In Gaza City, there are no well-protected shelters like in Israel or in another country.

Mohamed Hamada from Western Gaza City said he is thinking to leave his house by Monday night and go to another place to avoid a possible Israeli ground attack.

"Our house was damaged in the airstrikes on Gaza last week, the windows were broken, so we will leave our house and I hope there will be no ground operation because I want to get back home and not to find it pieces of rubble," Hamada said.