Benjamin Netanyahu warned residents of Gaza City to “leave now” ahead of a ramped-up military offensive, hours after at least six Israelis were killed in a shooting at a busy intersection in occupied east Jerusalem.
Israel’s military has pushed ahead with a controversial plan to seize complete control of the largest city in Gaza, where Palestinian health authorities said 65 people had been killed in the last 24 hours alone.
Defence minister Israel Katz also vowed that a “powerful hurricane” would be unleashed there soon.
In Jerusalem, meanwhile, Israeli police said on Monday that two Palestinian attackers opened fire around 10.15am local time at people waiting at a bus stop near Ramot Junction at the northern entrance to the city on a road leading to a settlement.
The junction is located in a part of Jerusalem that Israel captured in the 1967 war and later annexed in a move that the United Nations and most countries do not recognise.
Paramedics described a chaotic scene, with victims lying wounded and unconscious on the road and pavement.
Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency said the two attackers were Palestinians aged 20 and 21 from the West Bank with no prior arrests. Calling it a “terror attack”, Israeli police said they were killed swiftly after the shooting began.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the scene around two hours after the shooting. The premier was supposed to be in court on Monday for his ongoing corruption trial, but it was delayed due to the attack. He warned that Israel is “fighting a war on multiple fronts”, including Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
Later, he warned residents of Gaza that Israel would be ramping up its devastating strikes.
”I say to the residents of Gaza, I take this opportunity and listen to me carefully: you have been warned ‘leave now’,” he said at the air force command centre in Tel Aviv on Monday.
Mr Netanyahu said forces are now organising and assembling in Gaza City for a ground “manoeuvre”.
The shooting took place against the backdrop of nearly two years of Israel’s devastating bombardment of Gaza, launched in the aftermath of Hamas’s bloody 7 October 2023 attacks, which killed more than 1,200 people and saw at least 250 people taken hostage. Since then, Israel’s assaults have killed more than 64,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local officials, destroyed most of the besieged strip and pushed the enclave into famine.
In parallel in the West Bank, Palestinians have faced crippling Israeli military restrictions and a surge in deadly attacks by Jewish settlers, as well as military raids and arrests, and the largest forced displacement since 1967, according to rights groups such as Oxfam. In tandem, there has also been a spike in Palestinian militant activity.
On Monday, Israel’s paramedic service Magen David Adom said a 50-year-old man and three men in their thirties were among the people who died in Jerusalem. A woman in her 50s was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital in critical condition.
Seven people were in serious condition with gunshot wounds and several others were “lightly injured by glass”, Magen David Adom said. A pregnant woman was among the injured, it added.
Spain’s foreign ministry said a Spanish citizen was among those killed and condemned the attack. France, the EU and the United Arab Emirates also issued statements of condemnation.
A security officer and a civilian who were at the scene shot and killed the attackers, police said.
Officers recovered weapons used by the attackers, including ammunition and a knife, police added.
Witnesses in the occupied West Bank described mass raids by Israeli security forces and shared footage of armoured vehicles heading to different towns. The Israeli military said it was encircling Palestinian villages on the outskirts of the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah.
In a statement, Hamas said: “We affirm that this operation is a natural response to the occupation’s crimes and war of extermination it is waging against our people.” It did not claim the attack.
Israel Katz wrote on X, formerly Twitter, before the shooting: “This is a final warning to the murderers and rapists of Hamas in Gaza and in luxury hotels abroad: Release the hostages and lay down your weapons—or Gaza will be destroyed, and you will be annihilated.
“The IDF continues as planned—and is preparing to expand the manoeuvre to decisively defeat Gaza.”
Over the past few days, Israel has ordered people to flee ahead of its ground offensive into the city of a million residents, which experts say is experiencing famine.
US president Donald Trump said that he was giving his “last warning” to Hamas regarding a possible ceasefire, as Arab officials described a new American proposal for the immediate release of all the remaining hostages in exchange for 3,000 Palestinians and a temporary ceasefire.
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