Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday openly boasted that his army leveled 50 residential towers in Gaza City within two days, pledging more demolitions and forced expulsions of Palestinians.
"In the past two days, 50 of these towers have fallen. The air force brought them down,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.
"Now all of this is just an introduction, just a prelude, to the main intense operation – a ground maneuver of our forces, who are now organizing and gathering in Gaza City.”
Netanyahu pledged to proceed with forced displacement plans. "This is just the prelude to the main powerful operation, so I tell Gaza residents: you have been warned, get out of there.”
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas denounced Netanyahu’s boasting as "one of the ugliest forms of sadism and criminality” in full view of the world.
On Friday, the Israeli army began to bomb multi-story buildings sheltering hundreds of displaced civilians in Gaza City, as Tel Aviv pressed ahead with a plan to occupy the entire city.
Gaza's civil defense agency, meanwhile, said at least 39 people had been killed by Israel, including 25 in Gaza City, on Monday.
"All we hear are bombings and ambulances carrying martyrs," Laila Saqr, a resident, told AFP by telephone.
Saqr, 40, said she used to visit a gym in the tower twice a week, but now, "nothing is left."
"Israel destroys everything – even the memories. If they could, they would strip the very oxygen from the air."
Back in Gaza City, bereaved father Issa Suleiman carried the body of his one-year-old son, wrapped in a white shroud.
"We were sleeping in the tent with my three children and my wife," he told AFP, adding that five of his neighbours were killed and several seriously injured, including his wife and mother.
Israel has faced mounting international pressure to halt its campaign in Gaza, with United Nations rights chief Volker Turk saying Monday he was "horrified by the open use of genocidal rhetoric... by senior Israeli officials."
Israel has killed more than 64,500 Palestinians in a brutal offensive in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave and pushed the entire population into famine.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
