One brother chose to flee. His siblings chose to stay. None of them escaped the horrors of one of the deadliest Israeli campaigns in the northern Gaza Strip since the yearlong war began.

When Israel started its latest operation in early October to root out Hamas militants in northern Gaza, members of the Nasr family were among some 400,000 people estimated by the United Nations to remain. They faced a near-impossible choice.

Staying put has meant enduring devastating bombardment. Hospitals are filled with the dead and wounded. Bodies have been left for weeks beneath the rubble.

And it has meant hunger: Rights groups say Israel has imposed restrictions on aid so harsh they could amount to a starvation tactic.

But leaving has brought its own perils. Many civilians now believe that fleeing on the orders of Israeli forces is just as deadly.

When Ramy Nasr, 44, received an automated voice message from the Israeli army Oct. 6 declaring most of northern Gaza an evacuation zone, including his hometown, Jabalia, he took the warning to heart. His 17-year-old daughter, Mira, had been severely injured by a strike in December, he told The New York Times.

A day after he received the message, Nasr followed one of the many orders Israel has issued in the past weeks — orders so numerous that its main ally, the United States, warned they risk violating international law.

Yet Nasr, like many of his neighbors, said he feared using the route Israeli forces had designated. To reach it, he would have had to trek a mile on foot across active combat zones inside the city. On top of that, he said, Israeli tanks and soldiers were positioned along the evacuation road, which made him wary.

Instead of following the army route, Nasr decided on a shorter one that would allow his family to flee to safety more directly, through an intersection called Abu Sharkh.

The decision was almost fatal.

In a video filmed by a resident who had crossed ahead of Nasr, and which has been verified by the Times, a group of people fleeing rush up the road — among them, Nasr and his family. Suddenly a volley of gunfire and screaming erupts. Nasr is later seen being loaded onto a truck, his knee bleeding from a gunshot wound. His 9-year-old daughter, Dana, blinks silently in shock as someone presses a white bandage around her neck to stanch a stream of blood running down her checkered pink T-shirt.

“If we knew we were going to be shot at, we wouldn’t have crossed,” said Nasr, who confirmed that the video showed him and his family. Residents have taken to calling the Abu Sharkh intersection a “crossing of death.”

The Times spoke to five residents who witnessed gunfire as people tried to cross the intersection, and reviewed more than 80 videos and photographs from Oct. 7-9 showing families, including children and the elderly, hurriedly carrying their belongings amid sporadic shooting. It was not possible to verify the source of the shooting.

The Israeli army did not address detailed questions from the Times about the shooting of civilians at the Abu Sharkh crossing — or how residents could have left the town more safely.

In a briefing for journalists last week, an Israeli official said the army had encouraged and facilitated the safe passage of Palestinians out of Jabalia. The official, who declined to be identified to discuss military details, said that roughly 50,000 people had left Jabalia during that process, leaving about 10,000 inside.

Israel has accused Hamas of shooting at civilians fleeing northern Gaza, or blocking them from leaving, but Gaza citizens fleeing — among them Nasr — blame Israeli forces for such shootings. The Times could not verify either assertion.

When Nasr told his three siblings who planned to follow him what had happened, his older brother Ammar, who was partially blind, feared he would not survive a similar ordeal. Ammar and two other Nasr siblings decided they were better off staying in the building where they had lived with their families.

“Their fear of leaving ended up getting them killed,” Nasr said.

On Oct. 9, Israeli forces twice called the Nasr residence, ordering the family to evacuate. The Nasrs asked for assurances that they could make the crossing safely, explaining that Ammar had vision problems. The soldiers refused.

So the family decided instead to shelter in a building across the alley. Hours later, the building collapsed in a blast. Ammar, his wife and two children were all killed, along with another of Nasr’s brothers, Arif, and his sister, Ola.

The story of their final hours was recounted to the Times by the sole survivor of the blast, a neighbor named Mohammed Shouha. He had decided to shelter with the Nasr family after his sister was shot dead while trying to make the same crossing as Ramy Nasr.

The Israeli military declined to offer the Times a specific response to the Nasr family’s story. It said that Hamas had a “documented practice of operating from, nearby, underneath and within densely populated areas,” adding that its own strikes on military targets “are subject to relevant provisions of international law, including the taking of feasible precautions and after an assessment that the expected incidental damage to civilians and civilian property is not excessive in relation to the expected military advantage from the attack.”

In satellite imagery taken Oct. 11, several buildings near the Nasr family home appear badly damaged and destroyed, including the one where Shouha said they had taken shelter.

The family’s tragedy encapsulates the agonizing plight of civilians in northern Gaza. Whatever they choose — fleeing or staying — they face a military campaign so ferocious that Gaza residents, rights groups and some regional experts have condemned it as an intentional effort to depopulate the north.

“We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity,” Volker Türk, the United Nations human rights chief, said. “The Israeli government’s policies and practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians.”

For Nasr, escape from his besieged town has not diminished the sense of suffering. He and his family have fled to the relative safety of Gaza City — where they still constantly hear airstrikes, tanks and gunfire as they flee from place to place.

In the past few weeks, he has lost siblings and two nieces — their bodies still trapped beneath the rubble, he said. Three of his daughters have been wounded.

Were it not for his children, Nasr said, he would not want to go on.

“I wish I had died alongside my siblings,” he said. “Those that die are better off.”