The Israeli military on Saturday said Palestinians in Gaza City, the enclave's largest urban area, should leave for the south, warning the military was operating throughout the city.
Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X that residents should leave the city for a designated coastal area at Khan Younis in southern Gaza, assuring those fleeing that they would be able to receive food, medical care and shelter there.
Israeli forces have been carrying out an offensive on the suburbs of Gaza City for weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to capture the the northern city that he describes as a Hamas stronghold.
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.
Many of those in Gaza City were displaced earlier in the war only to later return. Some residents have said that they refuse to be displaced again. Source: AP / Yousef Al Zanoun
The military has been carrying out heavy strikes on the city for weeks, advancing through outer suburbs, and this week forces were within a few kilometres of the city centre.
Landmark Gaza City tower targeted
On Friday, the Israeli military bombed a high-rise building in the city's west that it said was being used by Hamas for surveillance and that civilians had been warned beforehand.
Palestinians said the strike targeted the Mushtaha tower in Rimal, an upscale neighbourhood before the war.
The military did not provide any evidence that militants were using the building.
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on a high-rise building in Gaza City, after the Israeli army issued a prior warning. Source: AAP / Yousef Al Zanoun
Footage showed the moment the building was struck, collapsing moments after impact and sending thick clouds of smoke billowing over nearby tent camps sheltering Palestinians.
The building's management issued a statement saying that it was being used for Palestinians displaced by the war, denying that it had been used for anything other than civilian purposes.
Across the strip, 30 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military on Friday, including 20 in Gaza City, Gaza's health ministry said.
New Hamas hostage video released
Hamas has released a video of two Israeli hostages seized from a music festival in Israel in October 2023, and one says he is being held in Gaza City.
Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Alon Ohel are two of 48 people still being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with 20 thought to be still alive.
Palestinian militants took 251 hostages into the enclave after its cross-border attack on southern Israeli communities in 2023 that killed about 1,200 people, triggering the war.
Guy Gilboa-Dalal was attending the Nova music festival in southern Israel when he was abducted by militants during their unprecedented attack nearly two years ago. Source: Supplied
The Reuters news agency could not independently determine when the video was recorded.
Gilboa-Dalal says that he is being held in Gaza City along with several other hostages and that he is afraid of being killed by Israel's offensive on the city.
Gilboa-Dalal was seen in a video in February being forced to watch other hostages being freed under a temporary ceasefire. Hostages who were filmed in similar videos and have since been freed have said their captors had dictated to them what to say.
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Towards the end of the clip he is shown meeting another captive, Alon Ohel. It is the first video to be released of Ohel since he was kidnapped.
US-based Human Rights Watch has condemned Hamas and other militant groups in the Gaza Strip for releasing videos of hostages, calling it inhumane treatment that amounts to a war crime.
Israeli officials have described the videos as psychological warfare.
More than 64,000 Palestinians have since been killed in the Gaza Strip, local health authorities say, with much of the enclave left in ruins and its residents facing a humanitarian crisis.
