Israel’s army said it bombed a Gaza City residential tower Sunday after issuing evacuation orders, just hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the military was “deepening” its assault on the Gaza Strip’s key urban center.

Israel has not publicly announced the start of a major offensive to seize the city, which Netanyahu’s cabinet approved last month, but the military has intensified bombings and operations in the area for weeks, in a bid to step up pressure on the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

“The (Israeli military) struck a high-rise building that was used by the Hamas terrorist organization in the area of Gaza City,” the military said in a statement referring to al-Roya Tower, saying it had been used “to monitor the location of... troops in the area.”

Hamas has denied using residential buildings for military purposes.

The high-rise was the third such residential tower to be struck in as many days.

The strike on al-Roya Tower left one person dead, the Al-Quds Hospital said in a statement.

The Israeli army had issued two evacuation orders for al-Roya, urging residents of the complex and the surrounding area to move south toward the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone” in Khan Younis.

The strike on the tower came hours after Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet that the military had intensified its offensive in Gaza City.

“We are deepening the maneuver on the outskirts of Gaza City and within Gaza City itself,” Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday’s cabinet meeting.

“We are destroying terrorist infrastructure, we are demolishing identified terror towers.”

On Friday and Saturday, the air force had levelled two other residential high-rises under the same claim that Hamas had used them as observation points.

‘Like an earthquake’

Witness Mohammed al-Nazli told AFP that the bombing of the al-Roya tower “felt like an earthquake” and that the building was “completely destroyed and turned to rubble.”

Commenting on the army’s levelling of high-rises over the past days, al-Nazli said it was “extremely terrifying, and we don’t know how much more we can endure.”

Netanyahu said on Sunday that around 100,000 residents had already left Gaza City, accusing Hamas of trying to prevent evacuations and of using civilians as “human shields.”

The escalation has fueled fears of a further deterioration in already dire humanitarian conditions for Palestinians living in the area.

On Saturday, Israeli aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets over western neighborhoods of Gaza City urging residents to evacuate, witnesses and an AFP journalist said.

Mustafa al-Jamal, who lives in Gaza city, told AFP on Saturday that he did not plan to leave.

He said the area in southern Gaza residents were told to evacuate to has been repeatedly bombed despite being declared “a safe zone.”

“Where can we go? We have no money, no tent, no house, no food.”

Israeli protesters took to the streets on Saturday to call on their government to reverse the decision to seize Gaza City, fearing for the fate of hostages believed to be held there.

“I am mortified by the fact that the Israeli army is conquering Gaza right now, for the hostages, for the soldiers, for the people in Gaza – this is a political war,” said Edith, a protester in Jerusalem who declined to give her full name.