Hello, welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service coming to you live from

London. I'm Paul Henley. The Israeli military have dropped leaflets over Gaza City telling all residents to leave

and warning it's about to become a combat zone. There are estimated to be more than a quarter

of a million people still living there. It's the second time people have been

told to flee the city since the start of the conflict. David Menzer in Tel Aviv is spokesman

for the Israeli Prime Minister's office. I asked him why a second evacuation of Gaza City

had been necessary nine months after the first.

Gaza is a pretty small place and that means that Hamas fighters, the terrorists, can move around pretty quickly and they develop this underground terror tunnel network, which is twice the size of the London underground and they've developed that specifically not to defend their own people but to move

their terrorists around now just today your Goulante our defense minister updated the Caneset our

Parliament and he said that we killed or taken off the battlefield through injury about 60% of Hamas terrorists.

We think that we've eliminated about 14,000 of them and also the majority of the 24 battalions, the mass battalions have been shattered,

but that doesn't mean they've disappeared.

Those pieces of those Hamas battalions are regrouping in different places and wherever

the IDF and the Israeli army finds those

regrouped Hamas terrorists it's got a duty it's got a duty to Israel's people it's got a duty to me and my

kids and my family to destroy them to make sure that they can't carry out

October the 7th ever again. But your repeated evacuation order gives the

impression to civilians that this could go on indefinitely that the so-called

fight to eliminate Hamas is is infinite. Paul it's certainly not infinite the

Prime Minister made clear just last week that we're coming to the end of this stage,

of this intensive stage of battling.

Hamas, we have set out three objectives for this war, that is to destroy Hamas militarily and their governing capability to ensure we get our 120

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