Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday vowed that Israel would destroy Gaza City unless the Hamas terror group releases the hostages and lays down its weapons.

Katz noted that the government on Thursday approved the IDF’s plans to open the “gates of hell” and “defeat Hamas in Gaza,” as the military prepares to push into Gaza City in a new offensive aimed at conquering the Palestinian territory’s largest population center.

The comments came hours after a global hunger monitor declared for the first time that famine had struck northern Gaza, a charge Israel swiftly denied, and as mediating countries made a final push to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal before Israel launches its planned assault.

“The gates of hell will soon open over Hamas murderers and rapists in Gaza — until they agree to Israel’s conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all hostages and their disarmament,” Katz said.

If Hamas doesn’t capitulate, Gaza City “will become Rafah and Beit Hanoun” — two cities that have been largely turned to rubble by Israeli military activity, he declared.

While the planned expansion of military operations in Gaza City has yet to fully get underway, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said Friday during a visit to the West Bank that the army is “expanding activity in Gaza.”

Israel, which has called up tens of thousands of army reservists, is pressing ahead with its plan to seize Gaza’s biggest urban center despite international criticism of an operation likely to force the displacement of many more Palestinians, and despite concerns by top security officials that it could endanger the hostages.

On the ground, Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency said Israeli fire killed at least 46 people on Friday, more than half of them in Gaza City. Hamas figures cannot be verified and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Umm Mohammed Nasr, a 42-year-old mother of four from Gaza City, said that “the bombing hasn’t stopped since this morning… but we have no idea where to go.”

“We are dying,” she said.

Ahead of the IDF’s upcoming offensive in Gaza City, Israel on Thursday warned medical facilities and international organizations in the northern Strip to gear up for mass evacuations of civilians.

Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza City have already left their homes as Israeli forces have escalated strikes on the Sabra and Tuffah neighborhoods. Some families have left for shelters along the coast, while others have moved to central and southern parts of the enclave, according to residents there.

Also on Friday, Hamas called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and lifting of Israeli-imposed restrictions on the flow of aid into the Strip after the United Nations Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system officially declared a famine in parts of the territory earlier in the day.

In a statement published online, the terror group called for “immediate action by the UN and the Security Council to stop the war and lift the siege” and demands that border crossings into Gaza be opened “without restrictions to allow the urgent and continuous entry of food, medicine, water and fuel.”

According to the IPC report, an estimated 514,000 people — or nearly a quarter of Gaza’s population — are experiencing famine, and that number is expected to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.

According to the hunger monitor, Israel’s total blockade on aid from early March to mid-May — which came after the collapse of a ceasefire with Hamas — was followed by “critically low volumes through July” and “coupled with the collapse of local food production,” leading to “extreme food shortages.”

Israel resumed the supply of aid in May, but the flow remained well below what it had been prior to the blockade; it was only in July, after reports of imminent famine, that Israel announced a series of actions to boost the flow of aid into Gaza, while denying there was starvation in the enclave.

Israel swiftly denied the report, saying that the IPC relies on Hamas sources and accused the system of having “twisted its own rules” in declaring a famine.

In a Friday statement, the Prime Minister’s Office called the IPC famine declaration an “outright lie” and “modern blood libel.”

“Israel does not have a policy of starvation. Israel has a policy of preventing starvation,” the PMO said.

The statement said the report by the IPC report ignores Israel’s humanitarian efforts and fails to mention a drop in the prices of oil, sugar, salt, flour, yeast and chickpeas in Gaza that the PMO attributes to the entry of humanitarian supplies into the Strip. The source of the information on the prices is unclear.

Citing data from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Israel has facilitated the entry of millions of tons of aid into Gaza since war there was triggered by the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, the PMO said.

The statement also said the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, as well as NGOs facilitated by Israel, have served millions of warm meals to Gazans.

On the other hand, the PMO cited UN data as saying that in July, “of 1,012 aid trucks collected, only 10 reached warehouses; the rest were looted before distribution.” The PMO also accused the UN of having refused to deliver “hundreds of pallets of food” from the Kerem Shalom Crossing.

The PMO did concede that there had been “temporary shortages” of aid in Gaza “which Israel overcame with airdrops, maritime deliveries, safe transport routes and GHF distribution points manned by American companies,” but blamed the shortages on “Hamas’s systematic theft.”

The statement did not mention the 11-week aid blockade Israel imposed on the Strip following the collapse of the last ceasefire-hostage deal on March 2.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 251 were taken hostage to the Strip.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000 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.