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Israel called on Filipinos to encourage their relatives and friends in Gaza to leave the area as soon as possible.

"If you know some that's currently there, tell them to go away because that's a war zone and the response of Israel is not going to be easy. We need to stop Hamas and in that case, as I said, we'll have the knock on the roof," Deputy Chief of Mission of Israel Embassy in Manila, Ester Elizabet Buzgan, said in a media briefing via Zoom on Thursday.

"We have the flyers, we have the warnings. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has published an announcement for anyone who is not related to leave Gaza as soon as possible. And that's the most we can do right now," she added.

Buzgan said Hamas is using people as a human shield as "they will be shooting from schools, they will be shooting from hospitals, they will be shooting from citizens houses".

"They do that on purpose because they don't want their infrastructure to be destroyed obviously, so they hide behind kids, they hide behind women. That's why you see the pictures in the media. Please, if you know someone tell them to go away," she said.

"That's something we need to know and understand that people will be killed. So if they have the opportunity to escape for their lives, please do that," she added.

As the Israelis continued the bombardments of Palestinian enclave, the Philippine government declared on Thursday crisis alert level 3 over Gaza which calls for voluntary repatriation.

Israel remained under Alert Level 2 where non-essential movement for Filipinos were restricted and suspended the deployment of OFWs.

As of Wednesday, the Department of Foreign Affairs said that 70 of the 137 Filipinos in Gaza have expressed their willingness to be repatriated.

However, Buzgan noted most of around 30,000 Filipinos do not wish to be repatriated back to the Philippines.

"The Filipinos that are currently in Israel are saying that most of them don't actually want to come back, they feel okay. And they want to stay with the people they're taking care of. So I believe that, that's a question to this government, the government of the Philippines but as far as I'm aware, they're actually wanting to stay," she said.

Amid some pockets of resistance, Buzgan said Israel has regained control of its territories attacked by Hamas.

"Currently, all territories have been regained... all the Filipinos that currently are in Israel are safe and sound and everything's okay," she said.

"All the law enforcement forces are monitoring, watching even the last terrorists who were hiding in the open areas. So we still see some attempts of Hamas to fire rockets at the civilians, but other than that, all control has been okay," she added. Robina Asido/DMS