Israel’s army urges Gaza City residents to move to ‘humanitarian zone’

The Israeli military told Palestinians in Gaza City to leave for the south on Saturday before bombing a high-rise tower as its forces advanced deeper into the enclave’s largest urban area.

Israeli forces have been carrying out an offensive in the suburbs of the northern city for weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to capture it.

Netanyahu says Gaza City is a Hamas stronghold and capturing it is necessary to defeat the Palestinian Islamist militants, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war.

The assault threatens to displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering there from nearly two years of fighting. Before the war, around a million people, nearly half of Gaza’s population, lived in the city.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on X that residents should leave the city for a designated coastal area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, assuring those fleeing that they would be able to receive food, medical care and shelter there.

The designated area was a “humanitarian zone”, Adraee said.