GAZA CITY, Sept. 13, 2025 — More than a quarter of a million residents have left Gaza City in recent weeks as Israel stepped up its military offensive on the Palestinian territory’s largest urban centre, the Israeli military said Saturday.
“According to IDF estimates, more than a quarter of a million residents of Gaza City have moved out of the city for their own safety,” Colonel Avichay Adraee, the military’s Arabic-language spokesman, said on X.
The United Nations estimates roughly one million people live in and around Gaza City. Independent verification of movements and casualty figures is difficult because of media restrictions and limited access to many parts of the enclave, AFP warned.
On Saturday the Israeli military dropped leaflets urging residents in western districts to evacuate. “The Israeli army is operating with very intense force in your area and is determined to dismantle and defeat Hamas,” one leaflet said, instructing civilians to “evacuate immediately via Al-Rashid Street to the south of Wadi Gaza.”
Gaza’s civil defence agency reported continuous air strikes and said at least five people were killed since dawn on Saturday. On Friday, the agency said at least 50 people were killed across the territory.
Israel says its operations are aimed at dismantling Hamas, which it regards as operating from Gaza City and using high-rise buildings for militant activity. The military has increasingly targeted such structures in recent weeks.
The United Nations and other international actors have warned that the intensified assault risks worsening an already catastrophic humanitarian situation. The UN has declared a famine in parts of Gaza, and aid agencies have repeatedly raised alarm about shortages of food, water and medical supplies.
“Every night we go to sleep not knowing if we will wake up alive,” Gaza City resident Umm Anas al-Ashqar told AFP. “The bombing around us never stops… We stayed in our house because we have nowhere else to go… This is not life. Death would be easier than this.”
(Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP: Displaced Palestinians check what remains of their tents after an overnight Israeli strike that levelled a building in Rimal neighbourhood, Gaza City, Sept. 13, 2025.)
