When the Israeli military ordered evacuations in part of the northern Gaza Strip about a year ago, Zuhair Abu Odeh rushed out with his 9-year-old daughter, who uses a wheelchair, in search of a safer place.

In his haste, he ran her chair into a crack in a road, jamming a wheel and forcing them to abandon it. Abu Odeh and his sons carried his daughter, Lara, on their backs for 4½ hours until they reached Nuseirat, 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) to the south.

"We’re living through impossible times," Abu Odeh, 46, said in a phone interview from a makeshift shelter in Khan Younis, where the family has since fled.