Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli army strike on a building in Gaza City, after the Israeli army issued a prior warning. AP
Israel's announcement — delivered by dropping thousands of paper leaflets over Palestinian areas — marked the first warning of a full evacuation of Gaza’s most densely populated area.
Defence Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday said Israel had demolished 30 high-rise buildings in Gaza, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at least 50 "terror towers" were destroyed, alleging they were used by armed Palestinian factions.
Gaza’s tallest buildings are known to house NGOs, media organisations and civil service offices, as well as hundreds of displaced civilians.
It was unclear if the towers Katz referred to are in addition to those announced by Netanyahu, who called the demolition of the high-rises “only the introduction, only the beginning of the main intensive operation — the ground incursion of our forces.”
Over the past days, Israel has destroyed multiple high-rise buildings in Gaza City, mainly west of Gaza City, a densely populated area filled with tent camps sheltering Palestinians displaced by Israel's nearly two-year war on Gaza.
There are around 1 million Palestinians in the area of Gaza City, though prior to this warning just a small fraction have evacuated.
Military spokesperson Col Avichay Adraee warned last week that the evacuation of Gaza City was “inevitable”, saying families who moved south would receive humanitarian assistance.
But on the ground, Israel has maintained a deadly blockade of Gaza since 2 March, triggering famine across the strip and allowing only a trickle of aid through US- and Israeli-operated distribution points, where Israeli forces have routinely opened fire on Palestinians.
Hundreds have been killed while trying to access aid. Aid agencies warn that the forced displacement of Gazans to the south — where infrastructure is barely functioning — would only deepen the humanitarian crisis.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed at least 64,522 Palestinians and injured more than 160,000 others, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Most of the Gaza Strip has been completely destroyed and around 90 percent of the population of some 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced, many of them multiple times.
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