THE Israeli army has bombed another high-rise in Gaza City after threatening Palestinian residents to evacuate or face being killed amid its ongoing siege and imposed mass starvation in the enclave.
The Israeli military designated more high-rise towers as targets in a map released on Saturday. Shortly after releasing the map, it bombed the 15-storey Soussi Tower, located opposite a building belonging to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood.
“These attacks are causing panic among the people, especially considering the time they are given to evacuate. Half an hour or an hour is not enough time for people to escape from these buildings,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said, reporting from Gaza City.
The Israeli military said in a statement, without offering evidence, that the buildings struck were used by Hamas to gather intelligence to monitor the locations of the Israeli army. It also said that armed Palestinian groups planted “numerous explosive devices” and dug a tunnel in the area.
Gaza’s Government Media Office rejected the claims and called them “part of a systematic policy of deception used by the occupation to justify the targeting of civilians and infrastructure” and forcibly displace Palestinians from their homes. It said that Israel has destroyed 90 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure.
The buildings designated for targeting were near the 12-storey Mushtaha Tower, which on Friday was bombed and razed to the ground, as Israel moves to seize Gaza City despite international criticism.
“Strikes like these add to an ongoing, incessant, continuous campaign… to raze to the ground entire neighbourhoods, buildings, and wipe out entire families and individual lives,” UNWRA spokesperson Tamara Alrifai told Al Jazeera.
As panic-stricken residents fled Gaza City, UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram said that Israel’s campaign to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza City was an “enormous threat” for almost one million people, pointing out that half of the population are children.
“It’s important to remember that every second person in Gaza is a child, and life is becoming almost impossible for them,” Ingram told Al Jazeera.
Save the Children said that at least one Palestinian child has been killed every hour on average by Israeli forces in Gaza over nearly 23 months of war, describing the statistic as a “horrific new low”.
At least 20,000 children have been killed since October 2023, according to Gaza government figures.
Israel has killed at least 67 people since Saturday morning, according to medical sources who spoke to Al Jazeera. The majority 45 people were killed in Gaza City.
Earlier, the enclave’s Ministry of Health reported that at least six more Palestinians died as a result of the Israeli-induced famine over the past day, bringing the total number of deaths from starvation during nearly two years of war to 382, including 135 children.
Israel has killed at least 64,368 Palestinians and wounded 162,367 more since the start of its war on Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.