Jerusalem, Sept 17: Israeli troops and tanks were pushing deeper into Gaza City on Wednesday, the second day of a ground offensive that was widely condemned internationally, as Palestinians fled the devastated area.
Israel’s military said that air force and artillery units had struck the city over 150 times in the last few days, ahead of ground troops moving in. The strikes have toppled high-rise towers in areas densely populated by tent camps where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering.
Israel claims the towers are being used by Hamas to surveil troops.
Overnight strikes killed at least 16 people, including women and children, hospital officials reported. The death count in Gaza is nearing 65,000 Palestinians since the war began October 7, 2023 with a Hamas-led attack on Israel, according to health officials in the enclave.
Meanwhile, Palestinians streamed out of the city — some by car, others on foot. Israel opened another corridor south of Gaza City for two days beginning Wednesday to allow more people to evacuate.
Children and parents among the latest fatalities
More than half of the Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes were in famine-stricken Gaza City, including a child and his mother who died in their apartment in the Shati refugee camp, according to officials from Shifa Hospital, which received the casualties.
In central Gaza, Al-Awda Hospital said an Israeli strike hit a house in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp, killing three, including a pregnant woman. Two parents and their child were also killed when a strike hit their tent in the Muwasi area west of the city of Khan Younis, said officials from Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were brought.
The Gaza Health Ministry, meanwhile, said that multiple Israeli strikes hit the Rantisi Hospital for children in Gaza City on Tuesday night. It posted pictures on Facebook showing the damaged roof, water tanks and rubble in a hospital hallway.
The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, said the strikes forced half of some 80 patients to flee the facility. About 40 patients, including four children in intensive care and eight premature babies, remained in the hospital with 30 medical workers, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the strikes, but in the past it has accused Hamas of building military infrastructure inside civilian areas.
The military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col Avichay Adraee, wrote on social media that a new route opened for those heading south for two days starting at noon Wednesday.
But many Palestinians in the north were cut off from the outside world. The Palestinian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, based in the occupied West Bank, said Israeli strikes on the main network lines in northern Gaza had collapsed internet and telephone services Wednesday morning.
The Associated Press tried unsuccessfully to reach many people in Gaza City.
An estimated 1 million Palestinians were living in the Gaza City region before warnings to evacuate began ahead of the offensive, and the Israeli military estimates 3,50,000 people have left the city.
The UN estimates that more than 2,38,000 Palestinians of some 1 million believed living in the city have fled northern Gaza over the past month. Hundreds of thousands more have stayed behind.
Aid groups and Qatar condemn offensive
A coalition of leading aid groups Wednesday urged the international community to take stronger measures to stop Israel’s offensive on Gaza City. It came a day after a commission of UN experts found Israel was committing genocide in the Palestinian enclave. Israel denies the allegation.
“What we are witnessing in Gaza is not only an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, but what the UN Commission of Inquiry has now concluded is a genocide,” read the statement from the aid groups. “States must use every available political, economic, and legal tool at their disposal to intervene. Rhetoric and half measures are not enough. This moment demands decisive action.”
The message was signed by leaders of over 20 aid organisations operating in Gaza, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, Anera and Save the Children.
Also Wednesday, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying they condemned “in the strongest terms” Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza. The ministry wrote on X that the operation marked a “extension of the war of genocide” against the Palestinians.
Qatar is incensed over an Israeli strike last week that killed five Hamas members and a local security official. (AP)
