Israel Flattens Gaza City High-Rise, Tells Residents To Vacate

An Israeli strike flattened a high-rise in Gaza City yesterday, the second in as many days after the military warned residents to flee ahead of a planned offensive to capture the area.

Israel has been warning for weeks of a new assault on the territory’s largest urban centre, without issuing a timeline.

It has stepped up air strikes in the area and operations on the city’s outskirts despite calls to abandon the plan, which has sparked widespread fears it could worsen already-dire humanitarian conditions.

The military yesterday announced that it struck a Gaza City high-rise, saying, “Hamas terrorists installed intelligence gathering equipment and positioned observation posts in the building in order to monitor” Israeli troops, adding it had taken “measures to mitigate harm to civilians”.

Witnesses identified the building as the Sussi residential tower and said it was destroyed, with video shared by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz showing the roughly 15-storey structure buckling to the ground in a cloud of dust and smoke.

“We’re continuing,” Katz said in the post, after having shared a video the previous day of another Gaza City high-rise being destroyed.

The military has said that in the coming days it will target structures deemed to be used by Hamas, particularly tall buildings. It also issued an evacuation order for another high-rise on Saturday, warning of an imminent strike and telling people to leave to the south.