Displaced Palestinians fleeing south travel in a truck with their belongings along the coastal road that passes through the Nuseirat Palestinian refugee camp, in central Gaza Strip, on Aug. 30, 2025. (Credit: Eyad Baba / AFP)
The Red Cross warned on Saturday against a mass evacuation of the population of Gaza City, as Israel tightens the siege of the area ahead of a major announced offensive against Palestinian Hamas.
“It is impossible for the mass evacuation of Gaza City to be carried out safely and with dignity under the current conditions,” said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Such a plan is “not only unfeasible, but also incomprehensible” if Israel intends to respect the principles of international humanitarian law, she added.
Thousands of residents have already fled the city, located in the north of the territory, where nearly one million people live according to UN estimates.
After nearly 23 months of a war that has devastated the Gaza Strip, the evacuation of Gaza City “would result in a mass displacement of people that no area of the Gaza Strip would be able to absorb,” warned Spoljaric.
Despite mounting pressure both abroad and within Israel to end the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government insists on continuing the offensive in the Gaza Strip, and the army has been ordered to prepare a large-scale assault on Gaza City.
For Netanyahu and his far-right allies, the goal is to finish off Hamas — the Palestinian Islamist movement that launched an attack on Oct. 7, 2023 — and to bring back all the hostages abducted that day. For the Israeli army, which officially declared Gaza City a “combat zone” on Friday in preparation for its offensive, the evacuation of the city is deemed “inevitable.”
On the ground, Israeli military operations further intensified on Saturday on the outskirts of the city.
‘Senseless bombardments’
A journalist working with AFP, positioned on the northern edge of Gaza City and the town of Jabalia, reported that he is now at the boundary of the area the army has ordered evacuated. The bombardments are getting closer, and the sounds of gunfire and explosions are clearly heard, he added.
Gaza’s Civil Defense, an emergency service operating under Hamas authority since the movement seized power in the territory in 2007, reported heavy Israeli strikes on the Sabra neighborhood (center) and Zeitoun (southeast), and an “escalation” in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood (north).
“The bombardments [last night] were insane, they didn’t stop for a second, and we didn’t sleep,” said Abu Mohammad Kishko, reached by phone from northern Zeitoun. “We also couldn’t breathe properly because of the smoke bombs, we were suffocating … We are trapped in our homes,” added the 42-year-old man, who, like many other residents, has not obeyed Israeli evacuation orders because “there is no safe place [in the Gaza Strip], and we have nowhere to go.”
’Total disaster’
“All night long, the bombings and explosions did not stop, and my children could not sleep,” testified Mariam Yassine, contacted in Sheikh Radwan. “My husband left a few days ago to look for a place for us, but he found nothing, and we don’t know what to do,” added the 38-year-old woman. “In Gaza, we live a daily tragedy, and it’s as if the world neither hears us nor sees us.”
Asked by AFP about its military operations, the Israeli army — whose troops have been conducting ground operations in Zeitoun for several days — simply stated that two of its soldiers were wounded by an explosive device “in the north of the Gaza Strip.”
“Nearly one million people living in the Gaza governorate have practically nowhere to go, nor even the means to move,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), on Friday. “If the military operation unfolds in the midst of the population … it will be a total disaster.”
The Oct. 7 attack killed 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data. Of the 251 people abducted that day, 47 remain held in Gaza, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
Israeli military reprisals have killed at least 63,025 people in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry — whose figures are considered reliable by the U.N. — does not specify the number of fighters among the dead.
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