Panic as Israel Warns High Rises in Gaza City Will Be Struck With Minutes to Get Out

Palestinian families are confronting Israel's scorched earth campaign to ethnically cleanse Gaza City.

We have a commitment to ensuring that our journalism is not locked behind a paywall. But the only way we can sustain this is through the voluntary support of our community of readers. If you are a free subscriber and you support our work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or gifting one to a friend or family member. You can also make a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible donation to support our work. If you do not have the means to support our work financially, you can do your part by sharing our work on social media and by forwarding this email to your network of contacts.

A resident of the multi-story Al-Mahna residential building watches as people throw their belongings from windows in panic ahead of an Israeli airstrike. September 14, 2025. (Screenshot of video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.)

GAZA CITY—After the Israeli military announced that a multi-story residential tower in Gaza was about to be targeted in an airstrike, families in Gaza screamed as they hurled their belongings out of their windows on Sunday.

The Al-Mahna building in Tal Al-Hawa, a southern neighborhood in Gaza City, was sheltering dozens of Palestinian families who are remaining in the face of Israel’s scorched earth campaign to seize control of the city. The Israeli military, which began its ethnic cleansing of the one million estimate residents of Gaza City last month, has destroyed hundreds of towers and homes in Gaza City, reducing dozens of high rise buildings to rubble and re-displacing hundreds of families in nearby tent encampments.

Men, women, and children scrambled out of the Al-Mahna building in utter panic, carrying whatever belongings they could salvage—thin mattresses, suitcases, baskets, and plastic chairs. People began throwing mattresses and bags out of the windows of the 12-story building, where clothes could be seen still hanging to dry in the balconies. The belongings crashed to the ground, putting people exiting the structure in danger. A woman screamed, “What is happening?” as she ran into the street. One man collapsed in despair, crying, “I can’t, I swear I can’t,” before his friends picked him up off the ground.

Israel bombed the Al-Mahna residential building in Gaza City minutes after residents were forced to flee in a panic. September 14, 2025. (Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.)

Shortly afterwards, a massive airstrike hit the upper floors of the building, filling the surrounding streets with debris and smoke. The Al-Mahna tower was one of at least three high-rise towers targeted by the Israeli military on Sunday, including a building on the campus of Islamic University, the Al-Kawthar tower in western Gaza City, and the al-Munawwarah City building.

The next day, the Israeli military bombed the Ghafri Tower, the tallest residential building in Gaza City, located in the west not far from the coastline. An airstrike brought the entire building collapsing to the ground in a massive plume of smoke so that people on the nearby beach had to run for cover.

Hundreds of people eventually gathered on the large mound of rubble where the building had stood just minutes earlier. “This tower was empty, it posed no threat to anyone or anything. Suddenly, they order us to leave the area and people went to the beach, as you can see,” Abu Karim told Drop Site News. “There was no reason to hit it. This was a tower like any tower, like any building, like any house, like any place. They have bombed children in the streets, women. There is no reason for this.”

Israel bombs the Ghafri Tower, the tallest residential building in Gaza City. September 15, 2025. (Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.)

After issuing multiple displacement orders for different neighborhoods in Gaza City, the Israeli military last week ordered the entire city to displace to the south. “We are not leaving. We are only leaving from the land to heaven. We are not leaving here. People may go to the south but we will remain steadfast in Gaza,” Abu Karim said.

Israel’s defense minister and war cabinet member Israel Katz posted a video on X of the Ghafri building attack, writing that “the terror tower…crashes into the sea of Gaza. Drowning the centers of terror and incitement.” The Israeli military has repeatedly claimed the high rise buildings it is targeting contain Hamas surveillance equipment and observation posts, but has provided no evidence, only repeating orders for Palestinians to head south. The Israeli Army claimed some 320,000 people have fled the city in recent days, with traffic jams on Al-Rashid Street, the main coastal road leading south. The UN put the number who have fled the city since the Gaza City offensive began at around 150,000.

“They are terrifying people and making them leave these areas to the south. Today people are unable to go to the south, they’ve spent days on the beach not knowing where to go,” a man who was standing in front of the rubble of the Ghafri building told Drop Site.

On Monday, the UN reported that at least 10 UNRWA buildings have been struck in Gaza City over the previous four days alone, including seven schools and two clinics used as shelters for thousands of displaced Palestinians. One third of malnutrition treatment facilities in the city have also shut down due to the forced displacement orders.

“We condemn the deadly escalation of the Israeli military offensive, which we saw over the weekend across Gaza City, with scores of people reportedly killed or injured. As you can imagine this is having an appalling impact on civilians enduring suffering and starvation," a UN spokesperson said in a press conference.

The heavy bombardment from land, sea, and air has killed dozens of Palestinians every day across Gaza. On Monday, over 50 people were killed, including 36 in Gaza City alone, according to Al Jazeera. Among those killed in Gaza City was Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Kouifi, who worked for the Safa news agency and Al-Aqsa TV channel. Gaza’s Government Media Office reported two other journalists were also killed on Monday: Ayman Haniyeh, who worked as a photographer and broadcast engineer for Al-Manara Media Agency, and journalist Iman al-Zamili, who worked for the Palestine News Network.

Over 250 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza, an unprecedented number in recent history. The confirmed death toll from Gaza’s health ministry since the start of the war is close to 65,000 with nearly 165,000 injured, both figures acknowledged to be vast undercounts.

Israel’s escalating military offensive on Gaza City comes as the entire area is suffering from a famine with Palestinians starving to death every day. The world’s leading expert on food crises, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, officially confirmed a famine in the governorate of Gaza, which includes Gaza City, on August 22. Conditions on the ground have not improved since then and the famine is projected to expand to the governorates of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis to the south, where Israel is ordering Palestinians to displace.

Some 425 Palestinians, including 145 children, have died due to starvation and malnutrition in Gaza since the start of the war, the majority of them since July.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous contributed to this report.