Tanks poised around Gaza City

GAZA/JERUSALEM, Nov 7 (Agencies): Israel gave civilians still trapped inside freshly encircled Gaza City a four-hour window to leave on Tuesday and escaping residents said they passed tanks in position to storm it.
Israel says its forces have surrounded Gaza City, home to a third of the enclave's 2.3 million people, and are poised to attack it soon in their campaign to annihilate the Hamas Islamists who stormed Israeli towns exactly a month ago.
Dozens of people have been reported killed by overnight Israeli air strikes in the Gazan cities of Khan Younis, Rafah and Deir al-Balah.
"It has been one full month of carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair," UN Human Rights Commissioner Volcker Turk said in a statement at the start of a trip to the region, during which he will visit the Rafah crossing from Egypt, the  sole route for aid.
Israel gave residents a window from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to leave Gaza City. Residents say Israeli tanks have been moving mostly at night, with Israeli forces largely relying on air and artillery strikes to clear a path for their ground advance.
At a time when world sentiment has begun to sour on Israel's devastating offensive in Gaza, the vast majority of Israelis, across the political spectrum, are convinced of the justice of the war.
Still under rocket and missile attacks on several fronts, they have little tolerance for anyone railing against the steep toll the conflict has exacted on the other side. They have rallied to crush Hamas, which breached the country's borders from the Gaza Strip, killing more than 1,400 people and taking over 240 hostage in an Oct. 7 rampage that triggered the war.
The Israel Defense Forces have not commented on the strikes - but said they took control of a Hamas stronghold in northern Gaza in recent fighting.
In Israel, people across the country are marking one month since the Hamas attacks on 7 October, which saw 1,400 people, mostly civilians, killed in their communities
In some of the first direct comments on Israel's plans for the future of Gaza after the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take over responsibility for the territory's security once it defeats the militants.
War began on Oct. 7 when Hamas fighters burst across the fence enclosing Gaza and killed 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, and abducted more than 200, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel has unrelentingly bombarded Hamas-run Gaza, killing more than 10,000 people, around 40 percent of them children, according to tallies by health officials there.