Thousands of leaflets ordering residents to leave famine-stricken Gaza City rained down on its streets on Tuesday as Israel pushed ahead with plans to drive all Palestinians from the area.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of an “intensified ground maneuver” on Monday evening, and ordered residents of Gaza’s largest city to leave just hours after two gunmen opened fire at a Jerusalem bus stop and killed six people.
Hamas hailed the attack, the deadliest in Israel since October 2024, as “heroic.” It did not claim responsibility for the shootings.
Netanyahu said the elimination of the gunmen or their supporters was “not enough.”
“My directive is to strike hard against terror strongholds,” he said after visiting the scene of the shooting with Israel’s far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“I promised you that we would take down Gaza’s terror towers,” he added, referring to multiple high-rise buildings destroyed by Israel in recent days, “and that is exactly what we are doing.”
“You have been warned—leave!” Netanyahu said, addressing Gaza City’s residents.
Ultranationalist Ben-Gvir told Israeli’s to “arm yourselves” in a separate statement Monday, and criticized Sunday’s Israeli Supreme Court ruling that the government had deprived Palestinian prisoners of a minimum subsistence diet.
The assault on Gaza City — declared a “dangerous combat zone” by Israel — is expected to displace hundreds of thousands of people, most of them already uprooted multiple times during the war.
The IDF has been carrying out heavy strikes on the city for weeks, advancing through northern suburbs to within a few miles of its center.
It has destroyed multiple high-rise buildings, saying that Hamas was operating from inside them, without providing evidence.
Jannah Mansour, 12, was living in a tent next to one of the high rises, and spent Monday looking for her clothes underneath the rubble.
She said she used to have beautiful dresses, but that now she feels like “walking garbage.”
Nothing is left in life,” she said. “We are finished.”
Footage showed Palestinians running for safety last week after Israeli forces destroyed the Mushtaha high-rise tower in a densely populated part of the city.
The tower’s managementsaid in a statement after it was destroying saying the tower was being used for displaced people and denied it had been used for anything other than civilian purposes.
Aid groups warn the offensive could deepen the humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave, and it has already drawn international condemnation.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said the “attacks on residential towers in Gaza have displaced dozes of families,” leaving many on the streets without shelter.
An Israeli military spokesman said Thursday that it now controls about 40% of the city, where about 1 million people lived prior to the war. The military controls about 75% of Gaza.
Israel launched its military campaign after the Hamas-led terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, which saw 1,200 people killed and around 250 people taken hostage.
Since then, Palestinian health officials say, Israeli forces have killed more than 64,000 people in Gaza, including thousands of children, while driving most of the population from their homes and destroying or damaging most of its buildings and infrastructure.
—NBC