The EEF's occupation of Gaza was not strongly resisted and a general advance during the morning of 7 November found the town abandoned. Orders for an attack at 04:50 by the 75th Division on Outpost Hill on the eastern side of Gaza had been issued; these were expanded to include Middlesex Hill and a 54th (East Anglian) Division attack on the Belah and Yunis trenches, and Turtle Hill in the coastal sector. However, by 04:35, two battalions each from the 161st and the 162nd Brigades (54th Division) supported by artillery had already advanced to occupy Lion and Tiger Trenches and Sheikh Redwan in the coastal sector to the north-north-west of Gaza. The advance by the 162nd Brigade took them through "the gardens and fields of Gaza to the main road northwards", when patrols sent into the city found it deserted. British artillery had destroyed all the homes of the 40,000 people who had lived in Gaza before the war. The 54th (East Anglian) Division subsequently took up a line stretching from the Jaffa road north of Sheikh Redwan to the Mediterranean sea.