Israel calls on famine-stricken residents to flee and targets more high-rises in Gaza City

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — The Israeli army issued evacuation orders and targeted high-rise buildings in famine-stricken Gaza City on Saturday, calling on Palestinians to move to the territory’s south as it escalates operations ahead of a new 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 says is suffering from famine as a result of Israel’s restrictions on food into the territory.

Most families have already been displaced several times during the nearly two-year-long Israel-Hamas war and say they have nowhere left to go, as the Israeli military has repeatedly bombed tent encampments that it had 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 have 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 military spokesperson Avichay Adraee urged Palestinians on Saturday to flee to the south of the Gaza Strip, saying on social media platform X that the army had declared the makeshift tent encampment of Muwasi and parts of the southern town of Khan Yunis to be a humanitarian zone.

It shared a map of Khan Yunis neighborhoods within the redrawn borders of the humanitarian zone, which covered the district home to Nasser Hospital. Israel hit the hospital last week in a strike that killed 22 people, including five journalists — among them Mariam Dagga, who worked for the Associated Press and other media outlets.

Palestinians would be able to drive from Gaza City to Khan Yunis, and the overcrowded coastal community of Muwasi to the town’s west, via a designated road without being searched, Adraee said.

Aid groups have raised alarm about woefully inadequate shelter, sanitation, water and food in Muwasi. Months of bombardment have decimated civilian infrastructure in Khan Yunis.

The military said in a statement that it would work to provide field hospitals, water pipelines and food supplies within its newly designated humanitarian zone.

Exhausted and despairing, many Palestinians refused to pack up and leave. Others were too weak or injured to 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.

The United Nations on Saturday said its staff would remain in Gaza City to provide badly needed aid to Palestinians caught up in Israel’s renewed assault on the city. It said Palestinians who heed Israeli evacuation orders must be able to return voluntarily when the situation allows.

Israel on Saturday issued evacuation warnings for two high-rises in Gaza City and surrounding tents, with Adraee, the military spokesperson, saying that the buildings were targets because Hamas had infrastructure inside or near them. Hamas didn’t comment on the allegations. Soon after, Adraee said that the military had struck one of the buildings.

Hamas called those allegations “baseless lies,” saying 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 about 20 minutes to grab their belongings and flee before warplanes razed the building.

“Suddenly, we were sitting at home and people started shouting,” said resident Aida Abu Kas, recalling the panic and confusion rippling through the building. “Some said it was a lie and others said it was real. We went out and didn’t know what to do.”

There was no immediate information on casualties.

Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, posted a video of Sousi Tower collapsing in an enormous cloud of smoke along with the words: “We continue.”

It was the second tower demolished in as many days. On Friday, Israel hit Mushtaha Tower, a local landmark that housed dozens of families, saying that Hamas militants used it for surveillance. Hamas denied those claims.

The leveling of high-rises comes as Israel ramps up its offensive after announcing last month it planned to take control of Gaza’s largest northern city, where many families are crammed into tents in the ruins of bombed-out buildings, in an effort to dislodge Hamas.

Earlier this week, the Israeli military said it had already seized control of 40% of the city.

At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Saturday, officials were counting the dead and tending to the wounded from Israeli bombardment the day before.

They said 15 people had been killed, including a family of five whose apartment was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on the city’s Shati refugee camp and civilians killed by Israeli gunfire while seeking aid near the Zikim crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

More than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at distribution points or along U.N. convoy routes, the Gaza Health Ministry reports, many of them by Israeli fire.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those killed Friday.

Israelis have staged widespread protests over the military’s renewed assault on Gaza City, fearing it will further endanger the remaining hostages held in the strip, 20 of whom Israel believes to still be alive.

On Saturday in Jerusalem, relatives of hostages and their supporters marched down a main thoroughfare toward the residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, chanting and holding signs rejecting the military’s planned takeover of Gaza City and urging a comprehensive ceasefire. “The government is burying them alive,” one sign read. “An unsigned deal kills them all,” read another.

Fears over the fate of hostages escalated on Friday, the 700th day of the war, when Hamas released a propaganda video of two hostages — Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Alon Ohel — looking gaunt and exhausted while being driven around Gaza City.

Ahead of their weekly Saturday protest near the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, families of hostages vented their anger over the intensified bombardment in Gaza City.

“This is not how you return abducted men and women,” said Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat was killed in captivity last year. “This is how you kill abducted men and women.”

A lasting truce has proved elusive. Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire proposal from Arab mediators last month. Israel has not 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. Most have since been released in ceasefires or other agreements.

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.

Shurafa and Mroue write for the Associated Press and reported from Deir al Balah and Beirut, respectively.