Palestinians mourn during the funeral of people killed in Israeli strikes, Sep. 6, 2025. (Credit: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters)
The Israeli army destroyed another residential tower in Gaza City on Saturday, after calling on residents to move to an area it declared “humanitarian,” in preparation for a ground assault nearly 23 months into the war.
Colonel Avichay Adraee, the army’s Arabic-language spokesperson, issued the call on social media as the U.N. — which estimates the area’s population at around one million — warned of a “disaster” if the offensive expands into Gaza City.
The army later announced it had struck a tower — identified by witnesses to AFP as the Soussi tower — located in the same southwestern area of the city it had ordered evacuated earlier, a day after bombing a similar building.
“We continue,” wrote Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on X, sharing a video circulating on social media that shows the 15-story building collapsing in a huge cloud of dust. On Friday, the army had warned it would target “terrorist infrastructure” in Gaza City, especially residential towers. It accuses Hamas — which denounced “shameless lies” — of using such buildings to operate.
The military, which says it controls around 75 percent of the Gaza Strip and 40 percent of Gaza City, has vowed to seize the area to defeat Hamas and free the hostages still held there.
The Islamist movement accepted in August a truce and hostage-release proposal mediated by Egypt, the United States and Qatar. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government insists Hamas must first disarm and says it intends to maintain security control over the Gaza Strip.
‘It’s going to be terrible’
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that Washington was “in deep negotiations with Hamas,” whose unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the war. “We are telling them: release all [the hostages] immediately,” he warned, “otherwise, it’s going to be terrible.”
According to the Israeli army, 47 hostages remain in Gaza, 27 of them presumed dead, out of the 251 people abducted on Oct. 7.
In his evacuation call, Col. Adraee said the coastal sector of al-Mawasi, further south, was being designated a “humanitarian zone” to “facilitate the departure of residents.” The army said the area contains “essential humanitarian infrastructure” and is supplied with food and medicine.
Since the war began, ravaging Gaza — where the U.N. says famine now grips 20 percent of the territory — the Israeli army has repeatedly bombed areas it had previously declared “humanitarian” or “safe,” saying it was targeting Hamas fighters.
“The army is lying to the people,” said Abdelnasser Muchtaha, 48, who fled his shelled neighborhood of Zeitoun to camp in western Gaza City, and says he intends “for now” to stay put. According to the U.N., nearly all of the enclave’s more than two million residents have been displaced at least once by airstrikes and fighting since Oct. 7.
Displaced to al-Mawasi with his family, Bassam al-Astal, 52, insisted the zone is “neither humanitarian nor safe”: “It’s where the most martyrs fall every day, there is no room for tents, no humanitarian services, no water, no sanitation, no food aid.”
‘Diabolical propaganda’
On Friday, Hamas released a video showing two hostages — Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Alon Ohel — as their families and supporters mobilized once again across Israel to mark 700 days of captivity and demand their release.
The footage shows Gilboa-Dalal urging Netanyahu not to launch an offensive in Gaza City. “No video of diabolical propaganda will weaken us or blunt our determination,” the prime minister responded after meeting the hostages’ parents, according to his office.
The Oct. 7 attack left 1,219 people dead in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data. Israeli retaliatory strikes have since killed at least 64,368 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the U.N.
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