Red Cross warns Israel against evacuating Gaza City residents

The Red Cross warned on Saturday that any Israeli attempt to evacuate Gaza City would put residents at risk, as Israel's military tightened its siege on the area ahead of a planned offensive.

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Gaza's civil defence agency said that since dawn Israeli attacks had killed 47 people in the territory already devastated by nearly 23 months of war.

"It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe and dignified under the current conditions," International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric said in a statement.

The dire state of shelter, healthcare and nutrition in Gaza meant evacuation was "not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances".

The Israeli military has declared Gaza City a "dangerous combat zone," without the daily pauses in fighting that have allowed limited food deliveries elsewhere.

The military did not call for the population to leave immediately, but a day earlier COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said it was making preparations "for moving the population southward for their protection.”

Gaza's civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told reporters that 47 people had been killed in Israeli bombing since dawn.