Thousands of leaflets ordering residents to immediately leave famine-stricken Gaza City rained down on its streets Tuesday as Israel pushed ahead with plans to drive all Palestinians from the area.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of an "intensified ground maneuver" Monday evening and ordered residents of Gaza's largest city to leave just hours after two gunmen opened fire at a Jerusalem bus stop, killing six people.
Hamas hailed the attack, the deadliest in Israel since October 2024, as “heroic” and claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement released on Tuesday.
Netanyahu said the elimination of the gunmen or their supporters was “not enough.”
"My directive is to strike hard against terror strongholds," he said after visiting the scene of the shooting with Israel's far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“I promised you that we would take down Gaza’s terror towers," he added, referring to multiple high-rise buildings destroyed by Israel in recent days, "and that is exactly what we are doing.”
“You have been warned — leave!” Netanyahu said, addressing Gaza City’s residents.
Ultranationalist Ben-Gvir told Israelis to "arm yourselves" in a separate statement Monday and criticized Sunday's Israeli Supreme Court ruling that the government had deprived Palestinian prisoners of a minimum subsistence diet.
Images from Gaza City on Sunday showed Palestinians jumping to catch leaflets falling from the sky, ordering them to evacuate to the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone," about 20 miles south. The Israeli military has struck areas deemed humanitarian zones, so few in the enclave consider them safe.
The assault on Gaza City — declared a “dangerous combat zone” by Israel — is expected to displace hundreds of thousands of people, most of them already uprooted multiple times during the war.
The Israeli military has been carrying out heavy strikes on the city for weeks, advancing through northern suburbs to within a few miles of its center.
It has destroyed multiple high-rise buildings, saying Hamas was operating from inside them, without providing evidence.
Jannah Mansour, 12, was living in a tent next to one of the high rises and spent Monday looking for her clothes underneath the rubble.
She said she used to have beautiful dresses, but that now she feels like "walking garbage."
"Nothing is left in life," she said. "We are finished."
Footage showed Palestinians running for safety last week after Israeli forces destroyed the Mushtaha high-rise tower in a densely populated part of the city.
The tower’s management said in a statement after it was destroying saying the tower was being used for displaced people and denied it had been used for anything other than civilian purposes.
Aid groups warn the offensive could deepen the humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave, and it has already drawn international condemnation.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said the “attacks on residential towers in Gaza have displaced dozes of families,” leaving many on the streets without shelter.
An Israeli military spokesman said Thursday that it now controls about 40% of the city, where about 1 million people lived prior to the war. The military controls about 75% of Gaza.
Israel launched its military campaign after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks Oct. 7, 2023, which saw 1,200 people killed and around 250 people taken hostage.
Since then, Palestinian health officials say, Israeli forces have killed more than 64,000 people in Gaza, including thousands of children, while driving most of the population from their homes and destroying or damaging most of its buildings and infrastructure.
Hundreds gathered Monday to bid farewell to Israeli-Spanish Yaakov Pinto, who was killed during the attack in Jerusalem.
Ester Lugasi, one of the injured, told Israeli TV from hospital that she thought she was “going to die."
“Suddenly I hear the shots starting,” she said. “I felt like I was running for an eternity.”
