An Israeli strike flattened a high-rise in Gaza City on Saturday -- the second in as many days -- after the military warned people to move to a "humanitarian zone" ahead of a planned offensive against the urban hub.

The Arab League has said that peaceful coexistence in the Middle East cannot be achieved without a Palestinian state and an end to what it described as Israel's "hostile practices".

The Israeli army told Gaza City residents to flee to a "humanitarian zone" in the south on Saturday ahead of a planned offensive to capture the territory's largest urban center.

The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces shot dead a 57-year-old man near a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Friday, while the military said it had "eliminated the terrorist".

The Arab League has said that peaceful coexistence in the Middle East cannot be achieved without a Palestinian state and an end to what it described as Israel's "hostile practices".

In a resolution submitted by Egypt and Saudi Arabia and adopted on Thursday, the League said that "the failure to reach a just solution to the Palestinian cause and the hostile practices of the occupying power" remain major obstacles to "peaceful coexistence" in the region.

Israel struck a high-rise building in Gaza City on Friday after an evacuation warning, as the military stepped up operations aimed at seizing control of the famine-stricken city of some 1 million Palestinians. Strikes elsewhere in Gaza City killed at least 27 people, health officials said.

The military accused Hamas militants of using high-rises in the city for surveillance and planned ambushes, and said it would carry out "precise, targeted strikes" on militant infrastructure in the coming days.

The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Hamas released footage on Friday purporting to show two hostages seized on October 7, 2023 alive in Gaza City late last month.

The video shows one hostage in a car being driven through a neighborhood with destroyed buildings, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to carry out a planned military offensive to conquer Gaza City.

Pope Leo XIV and his top diplomats thave old Israel's president that a two-state solution was the "only way out of the war," as the Vatican called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages and entry of humanitarian aid to famine-stricken Palestinians there.

The Vatican issued Thursday an unusually detailed statement following Leo's meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who also met with the Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin and foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. Herzog, for his part, said he had asked Leo to meet with families of the hostages, and called for intensified international efforts to secure their release.

Israel estimates that its imminent offensive on Gaza City would displace one million Palestinians, a senior military official said Wednesday, as Gaza's civil defense reported dozens killed across the territory.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli protestors took to the streets to call for a truce and hostage release deal after nearly two years of war.

Israel's defense minister vowed Thursday to inflict the biblical 10 plagues of Egypt on Yemen's Houthi rebels after they stepped up their missile attacks against Israel.