'Get out of there': Israeli PM urges Palestinians to evacuate ahead of Gaza City offensive

The Israeli military urged a full evacuation of Gaza City on Tuesday morning ahead of its planned expanded offensive in the northern city, where hundreds of thousands of people struggle under conditions of famine.

The announcement was the first warning for a full evacuation of the city in the current round of fighting. Previously, the military has warned specific sections of Gaza City to evacuate ahead of concentrated operations or strikes.

Associated Press reporters saw more cars and trucks than previous days passing from northern to southern Gaza on Tuesday, laden with supplies and people, but no widespread evacuation.

Israel says multiple towers destroyed in Gaza City

Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday said Israel had demolished 30 high-rise buildings in Gaza, which it accused Hamas of using for military infrastructure.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel destroyed at least 50 "terror towers" that he said are used by Hamas. It was unclear if the towers Katz referred to are in addition to those announced by Netanyahu, who called the demolition of the high-rises "only the introduction, only the beginning of the main intensive operation — the ground incursion of our forces."

Over the past days, Israel has destroyed multiple high-rises in Gaza City, warning that Hamas has installed surveillance equipment in them.

The demolitions are part of Israel ramping up its offensive to take control of what it portrays as Hamas' last remaining stronghold, urging Palestinians to flee parts of Gaza City for a designated humanitarian zone in the territory's south.

Despite warnings, few Palestinians have left

Tuesday's warnings were the most widespread evacuation warnings in the current round of fighting, though Israel's previous warnings to leave specific neighbourhoods have had little impact on a population that is exhausted from multiple displacements and unclear if moving to southern Gaza will really be safer.

There are an estimated 1 million Palestinians in the area of north Gaza around Gaza City, according to both the Israeli military and the United Nations, around half of Gaza's population of 2.1 million. As of September 7, a coalition of humanitarian groups tracking movement in northern Gaza recorded an estimated 97,000 displacements in north Gaza since the start of the military offensive on August 14. Of those, nearly 50,000 movements were recorded of people fleeing south. Others were people moving within northern Gaza.

The data from the coalition, called the Site Management Cluster, tracks movement from eyewitness accounts, social media posts and information from partners on the ground, because access to northern Gaza is restricted.

Military spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee warned last week that the evacuation of Gaza City was "inevitable," saying families who move south would receive humanitarian assistance. But aid groups warned there was little infrastructure to support them.

Dr. Rami Mhanna, managing director of Shifa Hospital, said although the situation in Gaza City was tense, the facility still operates and receives patients.

"So far, things are as usual," he told The Associated Press, two hours after the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of Gaza City. "But the atmosphere is tense and there is great psychological pressure on the staff and patients."

He said he didn't notice displacement in and around the hospital.

UN says families can't afford to move

The United Nations humanitarian agency said many families can't evacuate even if they want to, because displacement sites are overcrowded and because it can cost more than $1,000 to move to southern Gaza, a prohibitive cost for many.

A UN initiative to bring temporary shelters into Gaza said that more than 86,000 tents and other supplies were still awaiting clearance to enter Gaza as of last week.

Mirjana Spoljaric, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, warned last month that a mass evacuation of Gaza City was impossible in a "safe and dignified" way. Spoljaric said no area in Gaza can absorb such a massive evacuation given the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and the extreme shortages of food, water, shelter and medical care.

The UN agency that oversees Palestinian refugees said Tuesday said that Israeli attacks on residential towers in Gaza City had displaced dozens of families, with many of them having been left "on the streets without shelter or basic necessities."

COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing humanitarian aid to Gaza said 1,500 humanitarian aid trucks primarily containing food entered Gaza last week, and there are plans to bring in 100,000 tents in the coming weeks, many of which are currently waiting in Jordan. The tents needed to be adapted to swap metal poles, which COGAT said were repurposed into rockets used by militants, with plastic poles.

6 Palestinians die of malnutrition

Six Palestinian adults died of causes related to malnutrition and starvation in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, the territory's Health Ministry reported Tuesday. It brought the death toll from malnutrition-related causes to 259 since late June, when the ministry started to count fatalities among this age category, it said.

Another 140 children died of malnutrition-related causes since the start of the war in October 2023, the ministry said.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants abducted 251 people on October 7, 2023, and killed some 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians. Forty-eight hostages are still inside Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,522 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says around half of those killed were women and children. Large parts of major cities have been completely destroyed and around 90 percent of the population of some 2 million Palestinians have been displaced.