Eyewitnesses said that Israeli fighter jets launched a violent raid on the tower, completely destroying it and damaging dozens of tents housing displaced people in the vicinity, many of which were reduced to unusable pieces of cloth.
Witnesses indicated that the Israeli occupation forces warned residents to evacuate approximately five minutes before the bombing, sparking panic and fear among civilians, most of whom were unable to take their basic necessities.
Earlier on Saturday, the Israeli occupation issued a statement demanding the immediate evacuation of residents of four residential neighborhoods, as well as the Al-Nour Tower and the adjacent tents in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. The statement included a map highlighting the targeted sites in red, claiming that "Hamas infrastructure exists within or near them."
The statement called on Palestinians to head to the Al-Mawasi area in the southern Gaza Strip, which Israel claims is a "safe humanitarian zone," despite having bombed it more than 100 times in recent months, resulting in the deaths and injuries of hundreds of civilians. The area is home to approximately 800,000 Palestinians who lack even the most basic necessities of life.
"A crime that surpassed Nazism in brutality"
For its part, Hamas, in a statement on Saturday, considered the Israeli escalation in Gaza City a "terrorist attack and a crime that surpassed Nazism in brutality."
The movement stated that "the concentrated bombardment of residential neighborhoods and schools housing displaced persons in western Gaza City constitutes a crime that surpasses Nazi brutality," noting that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "continues to disregard international law and defy the international community by escalating its criminal operations against more than one million citizens in Gaza City."
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The occupation army intensifies its raids on Gaza City, and there are warnings of a "death sentence" for civilians.
Hamas asserted that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are facing "crimes of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement committed in full view of the world," calling on the international community and Arab and Islamic countries to "take serious and urgent action to revive the system of human values and laws and reject American protection for the occupation leaders."
The movement also called on "free peoples in various countries around the world to intensify their support for Gaza, take to the streets and squares, and continue their solidarity until the ongoing genocide is halted."
Earlier on Saturday, the Gaza Civil Defense said in a statement that Palestinians in Gaza City were being subjected to "ethnic cleansing" amid intensified Israeli bombardment and widespread destruction targeting remaining buildings and shelters for displaced people, as part of an effort to reoccupy them.
The government media office in the Gaza Strip confirmed in a statement on Saturday that the Israeli occupation has completely destroyed 1,600 residential towers and buildings in Gaza City since August 11, and severely damaged nearly 2,000 residential towers and buildings, in addition to destroying 13,000 tents, displacing more than 100,000 people who lived in those homes and tents.
On August 8, the Israeli government approved a plan proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to gradually reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip, starting with Gaza City. On August 11, the Israeli army launched an attack on the city, starting with the Zeitoun neighborhood (southeast). The attack included the demolition of homes using booby-trapped robots, artillery shelling, indiscriminate gunfire, and forced displacement.
Over the following weeks, the occupation forces expanded their air operations and policy of destroying residential neighborhoods to the Sabra neighborhood in the south, then to the northern neighborhoods of the city and later to the western ones.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel, with American support, has been committing genocide in Gaza, including killing, starvation, destruction, and displacement, ignoring international calls and orders from the International Court of Justice to halt it.
This genocide left 64,803 Palestinians dead, 164,264 wounded, most of them children and women, hundreds of thousands displaced, and a famine that claimed the lives of 420 Palestinians, including 145 children, as of Saturday.
