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By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Steven Scheer
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel on Monday told residents of Gaza City to leave immediately after warning that it would step up airstrikes and ground operations in the Gaza Strip in a "mighty hurricane" if Hamas does not free the last hostages it is holding and surrender.
In what it called a final warning, Israel's military told the Palestinian militant group that Gaza would be destroyed if it did not disarm and release 48 hostages seized in the 2023 attacks on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Residents said Israeli forces had bombed Gaza City from the air and blown up old armoured vehicles in its streets. Hamas was meanwhile studying the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal, delivered on Sunday with a warning from President Donald Trump that it was the militant group's "last chance".
"I say to the residents of Gaza (City): you have been warned - get out of there!" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding that Israel had in recent days knocked down 50 "terror towers" in a prelude to an upcoming "ground operation" in Gaza City.
"A mighty hurricane will hit the skies of Gaza City today, and the roofs of the terror towers will shake," Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on X.
"This is a final warning to the murderers and rapists of Hamas in Gaza and in the luxury hotels abroad: Release the hostages and lay down your weapons - or Gaza will be destroyed, and you will be annihilated."
Katz's post appeared before reports of a shooting at a bus stop in Jerusalem that killed six people including one Spanish citizen. Hamas praised the attackers.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed a 12-floor block in the middle of Gaza City where dozens of displaced families had been housed, three hours after urging those inside and in hundreds of tents in the surrounding area to leave.
In a statement, the IDF said Hamas militants who had "planted intelligence gathering means" and explosive devices had been operating near the building and "have used it throughout the war to plan and advance terror attacks against IDF forces".
According to a senior Israeli official, the latest U.S. proposal calls for Hamas to return all 48 remaining living and dead hostages on the first day of a ceasefire, during which negotiations would be held to end the war.
Hamas has long said it intends to hold onto at least some hostages until negotiations are complete. It said in a statement it was committed to releasing them all with a "clear announcement of an end to the war" and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani pressed Hamas political leaders to "respond positively" to the latest U.S.-proposed Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal during talks in Doha on Monday, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.
"The Qatari prime minister pressed Hamas to respond positively to the latest American proposal, conveyed through mediators, and aimed at securing a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza," the official said.
Hamas senior official Bassem Naim said on Monday that the U.S.'s Gaza ceasefire proposal amounted to "preliminary" ideas. "It is clear that the primary goal is to reach the refusal of the offer and not reach an agreement that leads to the end of the war," he said in a post on his Telegram channel, without presenting the group's official stance.
OFFENSIVE IN GAZA CITY
Israel launched a major assault last month on Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of residents are living in the ruins having returned after the city experienced the most intense fighting of the war's early weeks nearly two years ago.
The Israeli military said that four soldiers had been killed in northern Gaza on Monday.
Among at least 25 Palestinians reported killed in Gaza on Monday was Osama Balousha, a journalist for Palestinian media, medics said. Fifteen other people were killed in separate Israeli strikes and gunfire across the enclave, medics said, taking Monday's death toll to at least 40.
Nearly 250 journalists have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to Palestinian authorities, making it by far the world's deadliest war for news media in living memory. Israel bars all foreign reporters from Gaza, so all journalists killed there have been Palestinians. Palestinian officials say Israel has deliberately targeted some journalists, which Israel denies.
On Sunday, Trump suggested a deal could come soon to secure the release of all the hostages held by Hamas. An Israeli official said Israel was "seriously considering" Trump's proposal but did not elaborate.
The war began with an assault by Hamas-led fighters on southern Israel in 2023. Israel says the attackers killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza. Most of the hostages were released in ceasefires in November 2023 and January-March 2025, but the group has kept others as a bargaining chip.
Israel's assault has reduced much of the enclave to rubble and caused a humanitarian catastrophe. More than 64,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, according to health officials in Gaza.
Six more Palestinians, including two children, died of malnutrition and starvation in the space of 24 hours, the territory's health ministry said on Monday, raising deaths from such causes to at least 393 people, most in the past two months.
Israel, which controls all supplies into Gaza, says the extent of hunger there has been exaggerated and the reported deaths are due to other causes.
Throughout the conflict, efforts to negotiate an end to the war have faltered over Israel's insistence that Hamas free all hostages and surrender. Hamas says it will not lay down its arms until Palestinians have an independent state.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Steven Scheer in Jerusalem.; Editing by Peter Graff, Kevin Liffey and Alistair Bell)
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