Israel army says will use 'unprecedented force' in Gaza City and urges residents to leaveThe Israeli military warned on Friday it will operate with “unprecedented force” in Gaza City, urging residents to flee southwards while announcing the closure of a temporary evacuation route opened 48 hours earlier.
In a post on X addressing residents of Gaza City, the military’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said:
From this moment, Salah al-Din road is closed for southbound travel. The Israeli Defence Forces will continue to operate with unprecedented force against Hamas and other terrorist organisations.
He added the only possible route south was via Al-Rashid street and urged residents to “take this opportunity and join the hundreds of thousands of city residents who have moved south to the humanitarian area”.
Strikes by Israeli artillery, tanks and warplanes hit Gaza City again on Thursday as a UN official said “new waves of mass displacement” were under way, after about 60,000 fled the new assault in 72 hours earlier this week.

Smoke rises after Israeli strikes during a military operation in Gaza City. Photograph: Ebrahim Hajjaj/Reuters
Israeli military officials said Gaza City was a “Hamas stronghold” and that as many as 450,000 civilians had left. The estimate was based on multiple sources, including drone surveillance, an official told the Guardian.
Swathes of Gaza City, once a busy commercial and cultural hub, have been reduced to uninhabitable ruins. Until weeks ago, more than a million people were living there, many already displaced numerous times.
More on this in a moment, but first here are a number of other key developments:
More than a quarter of a million people have been displaced from Gaza City in the last month, according to figures from the UN, with tens of thousands more forced to flee makeshift homes and shelters daily in the face of a new Israeli offensive.