The IDF said on Wednesday it would increase its strikes on Gaza City in the coming days as part of its preparations to invade and conquer the city, as it continued to urge Palestinians to evacuate the area in the northern Gaza Strip, pushing back against Hamas’s claims that the humanitarian zone in the enclave’s south was full.

It said in a statement on Wednesday evening that it would “increase the pace of strikes” in the densely populated Gaza City, with the intention of “targeting Hamas’ terror infrastructure, disrupting its operational readiness, and reducing the threat to our forces as part of preparations for the next stages” of the offensive.

As part of its preparations, the IDF said it has struck over 360 “terror targets” in Gaza City in recent days, including several high-rise towers that it said were being used by Hamas for various purposes.

The widespread strikes were conducted in three main waves, beginning on Friday with attacks against high-rise buildings where the military said Hamas had installed surveillance equipment and set up sniper and anti-tank missile posts and command centers.

The first wave took place in the Daraj and Tuffah neighborhoods, where the IDF said it hit Hamas observation and sniper posts, a Hamas interrogation facility, tunnel shafts under buildings and weapon depots, among other targets.

The second and third waves took place in Daraj, Tuffah and the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, with numerous strikes against Hamas targets, including a tunnel where operatives were gathered to carry out an attack and an RPG manufacturing site, the military said.

The strikes continued into Wednesday, when the IDF hit a tower it said Hamas was using to monitor Israeli troops.

According to the military, the terror group had installed surveillance equipment inside the building to track the movement of Israeli troops in the area and to advance attacks on Israel.

A video shared online from the scene of the strike showed the building collapsing in a cloud of dust, followed by a secondary explosion.

Israel continued to urge Palestinians to evacuate Gaza City on Wednesday. The city in the north of the Strip is home to roughly one million people, or around half of Gaza’s total population. Residents have been slowly leaving as the IDF has ramped up preparations for an offensive against Hamas there, and on Sunday the military ordered the entire city to evacuate immediately.

In total, the military estimates that around 150,000 Palestinians have fled the city since Israel started urging them to evacuate, including tens of thousands in the past day.

But the vast majority have refused to heed the IDF’s call, choosing to stay put, having become exhausted by multiple previous displacements and believing nowhere in the Strip is truly safe. This led the military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, to reiterate the need to evacuate on Wednesday.

“The IDF is determined to defeat Hamas and will operate in the Gaza City area with great force, just as it has throughout the Strip,” Adraee said on X.

While Gazans have trickled out of the city, some of them faster than others, the IDF has accused Hamas of blocking those who are trying to leave.

To that end, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities stressed in a message on Wednesday that there was plenty of available space in the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in the enclave’s south to set up tents for those being displaced from Gaza City.

“In recent days, the Hamas terrorist organization has been running a false campaign aimed at preventing you, the residents of Gaza, from moving from the northern Gaza Strip to the south for your safety and protection,” COGAT chief Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian said on his Arabic-language Facebook page.

“Contrary to Hamas’s claims, there are available spaces in the humanitarian area for setting up tents,” Alian said. “Do not fall for Hamas’s lies, as it wants to use you as a human shield for its murderous goals.

“Hamas endangers you and harms your families. You must know the truth and follow the evacuation instructions. These are life-saving instructions,” he added.

COGAT published graphics showing locations in the humanitarian zone where there were open areas for setting up tents.

Even as Palestinian civilians slowly move elsewhere in the bombed-out Strip, the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Wednesday that the head of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, Izz al-Din Haddad, had instructed his fighters to remain in Gaza City and gird for battle with Israel.

Haddad reportedly told fighters that he too will be on the front lines during the fighting, which he predicted would last for months.

The report said other terror groups had taken similar stances to Haddad and have warned their operatives that they will be punished if they leave the city.

Meanwhile in Israel, the IDF said on Wednesday that Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir had approved operational plans for the campaign and had briefed senior officers on the matter.

He told officers that the military was “moving toward the next stages in the mission of toppling Hamas rule.”

“That is our objective. We are going to bring down this regime, and nothing will stop us from carrying out the mission,” he said, according to remarks provided by the IDF.

He stressed that the IDF’s two main goals remained “the release of the hostages,” which he added was a “moral mission of the highest priority, critical and essential,” and “the mission of toppling Hamas.”

“These are the missions of our generation,” Zamir told the officers.

“As I have said in the past, we will attack [Hamas] and pursue it everywhere, in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and in other places, as we did in the last 24 hours,” he said, referring to Tuesday’s strike in Qatar, which targeted Hamas’s top political leadership, albeit with the results in doubt.

Zamir said the IDF was “closely examining the shift in the balance of power in the Middle East.”

“We have already been in a war for nearly two years, and now we are in its decisive stages,” he added.

Strikes across other areas in the Strip continued as well on Wednesday, and the Hamas-run health ministry said hospitals had received 41 bodies of people killed in the past 24 hours, and 148 wounded people for treatment.

Separately, the health ministry said five people, including a child, had died of causes related to malnutrition over the past 24 hours, raising the overall reported toll of such deaths since the beginning of the war to 404, including 141 children.

The ministry, whose numbers cannot be verified, said the overall tally includes 126 Palestinians — among them 26 children — who died of malnutrition-related causes since the UN declared that there was a famine in northern Gaza last month.

Israel, which paused the delivery of aid into Gaza for nearly three months until mid-May, but which has sought to ramp up assistance since, has rejected the report.

Israel has accused Hamas of hijacking aid shipments, and the UN of failing to deliver them.

COGAT said on Wednesday that nearly 280 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Strip on Tuesday through the Kerem Shalom Border Crossing in southern Gaza and the Zikim Border Crossing in the north.

According to COGAT, around 400 trucks’ worth of aid were collected by the United Nations and other international organizations from the Gaza side of the crossings Tuesday to be distributed, though a backlog of “hundreds of trucks” remains.

Deliveries of similar amounts of aid have been reported daily in the past few weeks.

The UN has said 600 trucks of aid need to be distributed each day in order to properly feed the Strip’s roughly two million people amid the war.

COGAT also said that “tankers of UN fuel entered for the operation of essential humanitarian systems” on Tuesday, and that it coordinated the entry and exit of humanitarian aid workers rotating in and out of Gaza.