FILE PHOTO: Palestinians displaced by the Israeli military offensive shelter in an UNRWA school, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, August 19, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled/File Photo

By Alexander Cornwell

TEL AVIV (Reuters) -The Israeli military told Palestinians in Gaza City to leave for the south on Saturday before bombing a high-rise tower as its forces advance deeper into the enclave's largest urban area.

Israeli forces have been carrying out an offensive on the suburbs of the northern city for weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to capture it.

Netanyahu says Gaza City is a Hamas stronghold and capturing it is necessary to defeat the Palestinian Islamist militants, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war.

The assault threatens to displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering there from nearly two years of fighting. Before the war, around a million people, nearly half of Gaza's population, lived in the city.

Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X that residents should leave the city for a designated coastal area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, assuring those fleeing that they would be able to receive food, medical care and shelter there.

The designated area was a "humanitarian zone", Adraee said.

The military later bombed a high-rise Gaza City tower that it said was being used by Hamas, without providing evidence to support the assertion, and that civilians were warned in advance.

Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz shared a video on X of what appeared to be the multi-storey building collapsing after the strike, sending a cloud of dust and debris into the air.

It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

The Israeli military said Hamas used the building to gather intelligence and that explosive devices had been planted nearby. Hamas denied using the building for military purposes, and Palestinians said it had been used to shelter the displaced.

Before the strike, Gazan health authorities reported at least 23 Palestinians had been killed on Saturday, including at least 13 in the Gaza City area.

HEAVY STRIKES

The Israeli military bombed another high-rise tower on Friday that it had also said was being used by Hamas.

On Thursday, the military said it had control over almost half of Gaza City. It says it controls about 75% of all of Gaza.

Many of those in Gaza City were displaced earlier in the war only to later return. Some residents have said that they refuse to be displaced again.

The military has been carrying out heavy strikes on the city for weeks, advancing through outer suburbs, and this week forces were within a few kilometres of the city centre.

Netanyahu, backed by right-wing coalition allies, ordered the capture of Gaza City against the advice of Israel's military leadership, according to Israeli officials. Despite its hesitation, the military has called up tens of thousands of reservists to support the operation.

The war in Gaza has increasingly left Israel diplomatically isolated, with some of its closest allies condemning the campaign that has devastated the small territory.

Amnesty International on Friday urged Israel to halt its offensive on Gaza City and the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, warning that the military had destroyed homes and killed "scores of civilians" in recent days.

ALL-OR-NOTHING DEAL

Palestinian militants took 251 hostages into the enclave after a Hamas-led cross-border attack on southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023 that killed about 1,200 people.

More than 64,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, local health authorities say, with much of the enclave reduced to ruins and its residents facing a humanitarian crisis.

There are also growing calls within Israel, led by families of hostages and their supporters, to end the war in a diplomatic deal that would secure the release of the remaining 48 captives.

Israeli officials believe 20 of the hostages are alive.

Netanyahu is pushing for an all-or-nothing deal that would see all of the hostages released at once and Hamas surrendering.

A video released by Hamas on Friday showed two captives, one of whom said they were being held in Gaza City and that they feared being killed in Israel’s assault on the urban centre.

Israeli military officials say they have killed many of Hamas' key leaders and thousands of its fighters, reducing the Palestinian militant group to a guerrilla force.

Hamas has offered to release some hostages for a temporary ceasefire, similar to terms that were discussed in July before negotiations mediated by the U.S. and Arab states collapsed.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington was in "very deep" negotiations with the Palestinian militants.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades but today controls only parts of the enclave, has long said it would release all hostages if Israel agreed to end the war and to withdraw all its forces from Gaza.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Tel Aviv, additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo; Editing by Jan Harvey, William Mallard and Alex Richardson)