Israel on Saturday destroyed a residential tower that had been serving as a shelter for dozens of displaced families in Gaza.
The 15-floor al-Soussi tower was located in the Al-Sinaa neighbourhood of western Gaza City.
The New Arab’s Gaza correspondent said it contained more than 100 apartments and was built when the Palestinian Authority controlled Gaza, between 1993 and 2007.
This was the second high-rise building to be flattened by Israel in Gaza City in two days, as it presses ahead with a campaign to occupy and destroy the city and displace its inhabitants.
It ordered them to flee south to a “humanitarian zone” and claimed that “Hamas terrorists” were using the building to gather intelligence.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz celebrated the destruction of the tower in a post on the social media platform X, saying: "We’re continuing."
On Friday, Israel destroyed the Mushtaha Tower in Gaza’s Al-Rimal neighbourhood after striking its base and causing a massive explosion.
AFP footage showed the tower collapsing, sending a thick cloud of smoke and dust billowing into the sky.
Palestinians inspected the rubble and debris of the collapsed building in the aftermath.
Areej Ahmed, a 50-year-old displaced Palestinian who lives in a tent in the southwest of Gaza City, told AFP that her husband "saw residents of the Mushtaha Tower throwing their belongings from the upper floors to take them and flee before the strike".
"Less than half an hour after the evacuation orders, the tower was bombed," she said by telephone.
The Israeli army has threatened to destroy more of Gaza City’s residential towers, under the pretext that Hamas operates inside and around them.
It told residents that it would destroy the Al-Roya tower in Gaza City later on Saturday.
The towers are home to tens of thousands of Gaza City’s civilians, however, and Israel has been widely accused of carrying out a genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign designed to force civilians into ever smaller enclaves and eventually out of the devastated territory.
It has recently announced plans to occupy the whole of Gaza City and ordered hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate.
Nowhere safe to go
It is not known if the destruction of the two towers directly caused any deaths, but at least 68 people were killed across the Gaza Strip by Israeli attacks on Friday, with a further 21 on the morning and afternoon of Saturday.
Israel told Gaza City residents to move to the Mawasi area, which it claimed was a “safe zone”.
Gaza City residents, however, said they believed it made little difference whether they stayed or fled.
"Some say we should evacuate, others say we should stay," said Abdel Nasser Mushtaha, 48, a resident of the city's Zeitun neighbourhood now sheltering in a tent in the Rimal area.
"But everywhere in Gaza, there are bombings and deaths. For the past year-and-a-half, the worst bombings that caused massacres of civilians have been in Al-Mawasi, this so-called humanitarian zone," he added.
"It no longer makes any difference to us," said his daughter Samia Mushtaha, 20. "Wherever we go, death pursues us, whether by bombing or hunger."
The UN estimates nearly one million people remain in and around Gaza City, where it declared a famine last month. It has warned of a looming "disaster" if the assault proceeds.
The vast majority of Gaza's population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed at least 64,368 people, most of them women and children, according to health authorities. The true death toll is believed to be much higher because the bodies of thousands of uncounted victims are trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings.