GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: The Red Cross warned on Saturday that any Israeli attempt to evacuate Gaza City would put residents at risk, as Israel’s military tightened its siege on the area ahead of a planned offensive.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said that since dawn Israeli attacks had killed 66 people in the territory already devastated by nearly 23 months of war.
“It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe and dignified under the current conditions,” International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric said in a statement.
The dire state of shelter, health care and nutrition in Gaza meant evacuation was “not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances.”
Israel is under increasing pressure to end its offensive in Gaza where the great majority of the population has been displaced at least once and the United Nations has declared a famine.
But despite the calls at home and abroad for an end to the war, the Israeli army is readying itself for an operation to seize the Palestinian territory’s largest city and relocate its inhabitants.
On Saturday, at a rally in Tel Aviv demanding the negotiated release of the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza, captives’ families warned the impending offensive could imperil their lives.
The Israeli military has declared Gaza City a “dangerous combat zone,” without the daily pauses in fighting that have allowed limited food deliveries elsewhere.
The military did not call for the population to leave immediately, but a day earlier COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said it was making preparations “for moving the population southward for their protection.”
Gaza’s civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP 66 people had been killed in Israeli bombing since dawn.
The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the figure.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defense agency or the Israeli military.
Bassal said 12 people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit “a number of displaced people’s tents” near a mosque in the Al-Nasr area, west of Gaza City.
The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Umm Imad Kaheel, who was nearby at the time, said children were among those killed in the strike, which had “shaken the earth.”
“People were screaming and panicking, everyone running, trying to save the injured and retrieve the martyrs lying on the ground,” the 36-year-old said.
The civil defense agency said 12 people were killed by Israeli fire as they waited near food distribution centers in the north, south and center.
A journalist working for AFP on the northern edge of Gaza City reported he had been ordered to evacuate by the army, adding conditions had become increasingly difficult, with gunfire and explosions nearby.
Abu Mohammed Kishko, a resident of the city’s Zeitoun neighborhood, told AFP the bombardments the previous night had been “insane.”
“It didn’t stop for a second, and we didn’t sleep all night,” the 42-year-old said.
The government’s plans to expand the war have also drawn opposition inside Israel, where many fear they will jeopardize the lives of the remaining hostages.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said on Saturday the remains of the second of two hostages recovered from Gaza this week have been identified as belonging to the student Idan Shtivi.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group said the return of Idan Shtivi’s body represented “the closing of a circle and fulfils the State of Israel’s fundamental obligation to its citizens.”
Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, told the Tel Aviv rally that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “chooses to occupy the Gaza Strip instead of the current outline for a deal, it will be the execution of our hostages and dear soldiers.”
Earlier in August, Hamas agreed to a framework for a truce and hostage release deal but Israel has yet to give an official response.
The Israeli army, whose troops have been conducting ground operations in Zeitoun for several days, said two of its soldiers had been wounded by an explosive device “during combat in the northern Gaza Strip.”
It also said it had “struck a key Hamas terrorist in the area of Gaza City” without elaborating on the identity of the target.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack, which triggered the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Of the 251 hostages seized during the attack, 47 are still being held in Gaza, around 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 63,371 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
