Red Cross warns against evacuation of Gaza City as Israel tightens siege

The Red Cross warned on Saturday that any Israeli efforts to evacuate Gaza City would put residents at risk, as Israel's military tightened its siege on the area ahead of a major planned offensive.

After nearly 23 months of devastating war, Israel is under increasing pressure to end its offensive in Gaza, where the United Nations has declared a famine and the majority of the population has been displaced at least once.

But despite the calls at home and abroad for an end to the war, the Israeli army is readying itself for an intensified operation to seize the Palestinian territory's largest urban centre and relocate its inhabitants.

"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, healthcare and nutrition in Gaza meant evacuation was "not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances".

An Israeli military statement on Friday declared Gaza City a "dangerous combat zone", adding that daily pauses in fighting intended to allow limited food deliveries would no longer continue.

The military did not call for the population to leave immediately, but a day earlier COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said it was undertaking preparations "for moving the population southward for their protection".

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 bombardments coming closer to his position and gunfire and explosions heard nearby.

The UN estimates that nearly a million people currently live in Gaza governorate, which includes Gaza City and its surroundings.

The territory's civil defence agency reported intense Israeli strikes in Gaza City's Sabra and Zeitoun districts, and an "escalation" in the Sheikh Radwan area north of the city centre.

Abu Mohammed Kishko, a resident of the northern Zeitoun area, 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.

"We also couldn't breathe properly because of the smoke bombs -- we were suffocating," he added.

Kishko explained that he, like many other residents, had not followed the Israeli evacuation orders because there was nowhere safe to go.

Sheikh Radwan resident Mariam Yassine said the non-stop shelling had kept her children up all night.

"My husband went a few days ago to find us a place (to relocate to), but he couldn't find anything, and we don't know what to do. We have no place to go," the 38-year-old said.

"We are living in daily misery here in Gaza, as if the world doesn't hear us or see us."

On Friday, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, warned that there were "nearly one million people between the city and the northern governorate who basically have nowhere to go, have no resources even to move".

Critics of the war inside Israel have urged against pursuing the planned Gaza offensive, warning it could claim the lives of more soldiers and endanger the safety of hostages taken during Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack.

The Israeli army, whose troops have been conducting ground operations in Zeitoun for several days, said Saturday that two of its soldiers had been injured by an explosive device "during combat in the northern Gaza Strip".

Hamas's October 2023 attack, which sparked the war in Gaza, 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 63,025 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the UN considers reliable.