Israel's military IDF has for the second day attacked high-rise buildings in Gaza City, and Defense Minister Israel Katz has published a video of a house collapsing. The buildings have, according to IDF, been used by terrorist-stamped Hamas for reconnaissance against the military.
In line with the intensification of the offensive, the million population of Gaza City is urged to flee to a "humanitarian zone", where, among other things, al-Mawasi near the city of Khan Yunis is located.
There should, according to IDF, be field hospitals, desalinated drinking water, as well as food and medicine.
Questioned security
The proclamation of al-Mawasi as a humanitarian zone has been previously questioned because numerous military attacks and deaths have occurred even there. Al-Mawasi has also been previously described as full of hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents' tent dwellings.
In the area where Palestinians are supposed to be able to seek shelter, the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis is also included, according to AP, where over 20 people died in an Israeli attack at the end of August.
How much of the new initiative is just promises, and how much of the facilities already exist, is unclear. But Israel's Arabic-speaking spokesman Avichay Adraee writes that "work will be done to provide better humanitarian services" on site.
"Take the chance"
When Adraee at the end of August urged residents to evacuate in time and published a map of 19 zones to which they should go, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted that IDF itself had pointed out several of the areas as places where civilians are in danger.
According to the newspaper, the designated area covers seven square kilometers, and includes places that are either unsuitable for setting up tents or are already inhabited.
"Gaza people, do not follow Hamas' line", writes Adraee in Arabic on X on Saturday. "Take the chance to move early to the humanitarian zone, join the thousands who have already moved there"
It no longer matters to us. Wherever we go, death follows, whether it's from bombs or starvation. says 20-year-old Samia Mushtaha to the news agency AFP.
