Israel told Gaza City residents to move to what it said was a humanitarian area in the south of the Gaza Strip as the Israeli military prepared to take over Gaza City, bombing a high-rise building, according to media reports.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed it struck a high-rise building in Gaza City, saying it housed “intelligence gathering equipment and positioned observation posts” to monitor the movements of Israeli troops. The IDF added that “prior to the strike, steps were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians.”
Gaza City residents told France 24 that the tower was a residential building housing displaced people. The strike follows the bombing of a different high-rise building on Friday.
Al-Mawasi, on Gaza’s southern coast, has previously been designated a humanitarian zone, but has nonetheless been bombed repeatedly.
Israel has stepped up attacks on Gaza City following Cabinet plans to expand its military campaign and seize the largest urban center in the Gaza Strip. The IDF said Thursday that it controlled 40 percent of Gaza City and that it would “expand and intensify” its plans in the following days.
Hamas released videos of two hostages on Friday in a call to halt Israel’s offensive on Gaza City. According to the Israeli government, 48 hostages are still being held by Hamas, and 20 of them are thought to be alive.
Thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and shootings following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage.
As of late August, the death toll in Gaza stood at more than 63,500 people, including nearly 10,000 women and more than 18,000 children, according to numbers recorded by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, sourced from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
The strikes have drawn international criticism, with Tamara Alrifai, a spokesperson for the the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees, telling Al Jazeera that “strikes like these add to an ongoing, incessant, continuous campaign to raze down, to raze to the ground entire neighborhoods, buildings and wipe out entire families and individual live.”
Europe’s crisis management commissioner, Hadja Lahbib, condemned Israel’s expanded military offensive in August, saying “a full Israeli military takeover would be catastrophic: mass casualties, collapsed services & hostages at risk.”
European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera this week called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, in the strongest condemnation to come out of Brussels so far, though the Commission later distanced itself from her comments.
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