DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli army issued evacuation orders and targeted high-rise buildings in Gaza City on Saturday, urging Palestinians to flee south ahead of an escalating offensive to seize the city of nearly 1 million.
Aid groups warn that a large-scale evacuation would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza City, which the world's leading hunger watchdog announced last month was officially suffering from famine as a result of Israeli restrictions on food aid.
Most Palestinian families have been repeatedly displaced in the nearly two-year-long war and say they have nowhere left to go. The Israeli military has previously bombed tent encampments designated as humanitarian zones.
“There is no safe tent, no safe house, no safe place, no safety at all,” said Nadia Marouf, who fled Israel's offensive in the north with her children and resettled in Gaza City — only to see her tent destroyed Saturday in an Israeli airstrike that wiped out a 15-story building and surrounding encampment.
"Where do I go? We went to the south, there is no space in the south, where can we go?”
Israeli army urges Palestinians to move to a ‘humanitarian zone’
Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee called on Palestinians to flee to southern Gaza, announcing on social media that the army had redrawn the borders of a humanitarian zone to encompass the overcrowded encampment of Muwasi and parts of the southern city of Khan Younis.
Aid groups have raised alarm about woefully inadequate shelter, sanitation, water and food in Muwasi. Months of Israeli bombardment have decimated civilian infrastructure in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said it would work to provide field hospitals, water pipelines and food supplies within its humanitarian zone.
Hamas urged Palestinians to stay put in defiance of the latest evacuation orders. Exhausted and despairing, many Palestinians had their own reasons for refusing to pack up and uproot themselves again.
“I can’t walk, I am in pain, and I do not know what to do or where to go,” said Ala Alfarani, whose tent was crushed beneath a pile of rubble in Israel's strike on a high-rise in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of south Gaza City.
Israel targets high-rises in Gaza City
Israel on Saturday issued evacuation warnings for two high-rises in Gaza City, with Adraee, the military spokesperson, accusing Hamas of operating inside or near the towers.
Soon after, Adraee said that the military had struck one of them.
Hamas rejected the allegations, insisting the high-rises were residential towers.
Residents of Sousi Tower, a prominent 15-story building, told The Associated Press that the Israeli army gave them around 20 minutes to grab their belongings and flee before warplanes razed the building.
“We were sitting at home and people started shouting,” recalled resident Aida Abu Kas, describing panic and confusion rippling through the building. “Some said it was a lie and other said it was real. We went out and didn’t know what to do.”
It was not immediately clear if people had been killed or wounded in the strike.
Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, posted a video of the Sousi Tower collapsing in an enormous cloud of smoke along with the words: “We continue.”
It was the second Gaza City tower demolished in as many days. On Friday, Israel hit Mushtaha Tower, a local landmark that housed dozens of families, saying that Hamas militants had used it for surveillance. Hamas denied those claims.
The leveling of high-rises comes as Israel ramps up its offensive against Hamas after announcing plans to take control of Gaza's largest city, where displaced Palestinian families have pitched tents on the ruins of bombed-out buildings.
Earlier this week, the Israeli military said it had seized control of 40% of the city.
Israel says the assault is aimed at pressuring Hamas to surrender. Critics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuse him of prolonging the war for political reasons.
More Palestinians killed by Israeli fire at aid sites
Medical officials at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital reported receiving the bodies of 11 Palestinians whom they said had been shot and killed by Israeli soldiers Saturday while gathering to get food at the Zikim crossing between Gaza and Israel.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the shooting deaths. But it has previously acknowledged its forces opening fire to disperse large crowds at food distribution sites or as warning shots when Palestinians approach in what it says is a threatening manner.
Such deadly episodes often occur at Zikim crossing, where desperate Palestinians rush toward U.N. humanitarian aid trucks entering the enclave as hunger spreads across the territory. Netanyahu has rejected reports of famine in Gaza as a “global campaign of lies.”
The director of Shifa Hospital, Mohamed Abu Selmiya, said that on Friday, another 23 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip while seeking aid, six of them at Zikim.
“It's the same every day, gunfire and tank shelling whenever we try to approach the aid trucks," said Ibrahim al-Taweel, 24, who endures the mayhem at Zakim to get food otherwise unaffordable in Gaza City due to shortages and price gouging.
The Gaza Health Ministry reports that over 2,000 Palestinians have been killed at distribution sites in recent months, many of them by Israeli fire.
Thousands protest for return of hostages
Thousands of Israelis rallied across Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Saturday evening to increase pressure on Netanyahu to reach a deal with Hamas that would free the remaining 48 hostages held in Gaza.
The protesters vented their outrage at the military's renewed assault on Gaza City, fearing the escalation will further endanger their captive loved ones. The Israeli military estimates that 20 hostages in Gaza are still alive.
“That is not how you return abducted men and women,” said Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat, was killed in captivity last year. “That is how you kill abducted men and women.”
In Jerusalem, massive crowds marched through the city shouting “all of them now!” and spilled into the streets outside Netanyahu's residence, chanting “traitor, traitor!"
“The government is burying them alive,” one protest sign read. “An unsigned deal kills them all,” read another.
A Hamas propaganda video released Friday, the 700th day of the war, has intensified anxiety over the fate of the hostages. The apparently recent footage showed two hostages — Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Alon Ohel — looking gaunt and exhausted while being driven around Gaza City.
“Enough waiting, enough understanding, enough already!" Michel Iluz, whose son Guy Iluz was killed while captive in Gaza, shouted into the microphone at the Jerusalem protest, the pain in his voice mounting to a howl. “We're fed up! How much longer can you abuse us?”
In Tel Aviv, demonstrators poured into Hostages Square for the weekly Saturday night demonstration, unfurling a massive banner appealing to U.S. President Donald Trump to “save the hostages now!”
A lasting truce has proven elusive. Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire proposal from Arab mediators last month. Israel has not yet responded to the offer, vowing to continue the war until Hamas disarms and releases all hostages.
Israel also has insisted on retaining open-ended security control of the territory of some 2 million Palestinians — a condition unacceptable to Hamas.
The war erupted when Hamas-led militants invaded southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 others on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants beyond saying that women and children make up around half the dead.
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Mroue reported from Beirut.
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