Around 780,000 Palestinians have so far evacuated Gaza City to the Strip’s south, the Israel Defense Forces said Saturday, as the military intensified its offensive to capture the Palestinian enclave’s largest city and defeat the remaining Hamas forces. Palestinians reported dozens killed in unrelenting strikes, as tanks pushed into the heart of the city.
“Gaza City is emptying because its residents realize that the military operation is escalating and that moving south is for their safety,” said Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman.
“We call on you to move to the humanitarian area in al-Mawasi as soon as possible and to join more than 750,000 of the city’s residents who left in recent days and weeks for their safety,” he added.
Around one million Palestinians were estimated to be residing in Gaza City before the IDF launched the major offensive earlier this month. Civilians have been ordered to evacuate to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza.
The rate of Palestinians leaving the area has risen in the past week, as the IDF advances deeper into Gaza City.
According to the army, the Israeli Air Force struck some 120 targets in the Gaza Strip over the past day, including buildings used by terror groups, terror operatives and other infrastructure.
In Gaza City, the IDF said the 98th Division killed several gunmen and located many weapons, including RPGs and rockets. The division also directed drone strikes on a Hamas surveillance post and a staging point for Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives, according to the IDF.
The 162nd and 36th divisions are also operating in Gaza City, and in the past day, killed additional terror operatives and destroyed Hamas infrastructure, including tunnels, the army added.
According to Gazan health officials, Israeli strikes have killed at least 76 people across Gaza since Friday night.
Gazan authorities, tied to Hamas, do not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and their casualty figures cannot be verified.
Strikes in central and northern Gaza killed people in their homes in the early hours of the morning, including nine from the same family in a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to health staff at the Al-Awda hospital where the bodies were brought.
Strikes also demolished a house in Gaza City’s Tufah neighborhood, killing at least 11 people, more than half of them women and children, according to the Al-Ahly Hospital where the bodies were brought. Four other people were killed when an airstrike hit their homes in the Shati refugee camp, according to Shifa hospital.
The director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City told The Associated Press that medical teams there were concerned about Israeli “tanks approaching the vicinity of the hospital,” restricting access to the facility where 159 patients are being treated.
“The bombardment has not stopped for a single moment,” Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiya said.
He added that 14 premature babies were treated in incubators in Helou Hospital, though the head of neonatal intensive care there, Dr. Nasser Bulbul, has said that facility’s main gate was closed because of drones flying over the building.
The IDF has raided Shifa Hospital twice since the beginning of the war, during which troops killed hundreds of gunmen, including top commanders in Hamas and Islamic Jihad; detained hundreds of terror suspects; uncovered tunnels; and seized numerous weapons.
On Friday, aid group Doctors Without Borders said it was forced to suspend activities in Gaza City. The group said Israeli tanks were less than a kilometer (half a mile) from its facilities, creating an “unacceptable level of risk” for its staff.
Also Friday, the UN said that Israel has stepped up its military operations in Gaza City over the last 24 hours, and is conducting airstrikes every eight to nine minutes on average in addition to shelling, chopper fire and gunfire toward those waiting for aid.
Roughly 16,500 people fled Gaza City on Friday alone, heeding the evacuation, while departing on journeys with unclear destinations, given the shrinking space and limited resources in Gaza for civilians, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said during a briefing, citing humanitarian staff on the ground.
“Still, hundreds of thousands of people remain in Gaza City amid extreme insecurity. They are heavily reliant on humanitarian assistance as more critical services there have been forced to close or move,” he said.
Only seven of 15 humanitarian missions were completed due to Israeli restrictions, according to Dujarric.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 65,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.