Smoke rises from a building hit by an Israeli strike in the heart of Gaza City on Sept. 5, 2025. (Credit: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters)
The Israeli army struck a high-rise on Friday in the main city of the enclave that Israel says it wants to conquer, on the 700th day of the devastating war in the Palestinian territory against the Islamist movement Hamas.
The tower, located in the center, collapsed like a house of cards. The army said it had warned residents ahead of the strike “in order to limit harm to civilians.”
“My husband told me he saw residents of the Mushtaha Tower throwing their belongings from the upper floors to take them with them and escape before the bombing. Less than half an hour after the evacuation orders, the tower was bombed,” said Areej Ahmad, 50, displaced from northwest Gaza City to a tent in the southwest.
The army said in a statement that Hamas had set up “infrastructure used to prepare and carry out attacks” on Israeli forces in the tower. “In the coming days, the army will carry out precise and targeted strikes against terrorist infrastructure,” it continued, specifying that high-rises would in particular be targeted.
“The lock on the gates of hell to Gaza has been broken,” said Defense Minister Israel Katz in a previous statement. “News that Israel has started bombing towers ... is terrifying. Everyone is scared,” said Ahmad Abu Wutfa, 45, who lives on the fifth floor of a building in western Gaza City. “My children are terrified,” he added.
Famine and catastrophe
The Israeli army, which claims to control about 75 percent of the Gaza Strip and 40 percent of Gaza City, wants to capture this urban area, which it describes as Hamas' last stronghold in the Palestinian territory.
According to a senior Israeli military official, “one million” people could leave Gaza City in the north towards the south of the territory.
Israeli airstrikes on buildings and tents housing displaced people killed 19 people on Friday in several neighborhoods of the city and its outskirts, according to the Civil Defense in a statement. Ten other people died elsewhere in the territory, added the emergency services organization, which operates under Hamas authority.
Asked by AFP, the Israeli army was not able to comment on these strike reports. Since the war began, at least 64,300 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to Gaza's health ministry.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that “childhood cannot survive” in Gaza City as Israel prepares its offensive on the enclave's most populous city. “The unthinkable is not ahead – it’s already here. The escalation is underway,” said UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram, warning of malnutrition and famine, displacement and the lack of shelter and medical care.
She stressed that the situation in the Palestinian territory is not accidental. “It is the direct consequence of choices that have turned Gaza, and indeed the entire territory, into a place where people’s lives are under attack from every angle, every day.”
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also warned Friday about famine in the Gaza Strip, calling for an end to this “catastrophe that Israel could have prevented and could stop at any moment,” with at least 370 people having died of hunger since the war began, according to him.
“Starving civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime that can never be tolerated,” he also said, warning that it “risks legitimizing its use in future conflicts.”
International denunciations and hostage videos
Spanish European Commissioner Teresa Ribera on Thursday called the situation in Gaza “genocide,” lamenting the inaction of the EU’s 27 member states.
The first to speak out on the matter within the European executive, she immediately triggered condemnation from Israel, which accused her of becoming “a mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda.”
While the European Commission concluded at the end of June that Israel was violating an article of its association agreement with the EU on human rights, no sanctions have been imposed because of divisions among member countries despite weeks of talks.
The European Union is “failing to live up to its responsibilities” regarding the war in Gaza and its credibility in foreign policy “is collapsing,” Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot told AFP in an interview Friday.
Brussels decided this week to unilaterally impose a set of sanctions on Israel or on certain Netanyahu government ministers and has pledged to join countries — including France — that will recognize the State of Palestine during the upcoming U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 22 — under certain conditions. In this context, Finland announced Friday it is signing the Franco-Saudi declaration on a two-state solution but did not commit to a date for recognizing a Palestinian state, as its government is divided on the issue.
After nearly 23 months of war, Israel faces immense pressure from abroad and internally to cease hostilities and secure the release of hostages. Relatives of those abducted during Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7, 2023, attack once again demonstrated Friday, calling for their release, with more protests planned across the country.
At the same time, Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, released a video featuring two of the hostages. One, identified by Israeli media as Guy Gilboa-Dalal, is filmed in a car driving through destroyed buildings, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to launch an offensive on Gaza City.
Though the authenticity and date of the video could not be confirmed, the hostage claims to be in Gaza City and that the images were shot on Aug. 28, 2025.
The second hostage, seen at the video’s end, is Alon Ohel. No images of him had been released since his abduction, unlike Gilboa-Dalal, who appeared in a video published on Feb. 23, attending the release of other hostages during the then-operational truce.
Annexation of occupied territories
In the West Bank, three Palestinians aged 84, 64 and 13 were injured in an attack by about 30 Israeli settlers in Khallet al-Daba, south of Hebron, in the Masafer Yatta area, southern occupied West Bank activists reported, according to Haaretz.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had criticized on Thursday France and other countries planning to recognize the Palestinian state, saying he had warned them of possible reprisals from Israel in the form of annexation of West Bank territories.
The U.S. Secretary of State refused to join in worldwide condemnation of Israel’s settlement plan in the West Bank, approved by Israel, which jeopardizes the possibility of a Palestinian state.
That same day, the U.S. imposed sanctions on three Palestinian NGOs accused of working with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has notably issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, according to the State Department.
The NGOs al-Haq, al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) “have been directly involved in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute Israeli nationals without Israel’s consent,” according to the statement signed by Marco Rubio.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour.
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