Israel launches major ground offensive on Gaza City, forcing thousands more to flee

Israel has launched its long-planned major ground offensive on Gaza City, conducting heavy air strikes overnight as troops pushed into the edges of the city.

Thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee down a single coastal road to the centre of the Strip, joining hundreds of thousands who have already fled.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a “powerful operation” had been launched against Hamas’s “last major stronghold” but UN human rights chief Volker Türk condemned the assault as “totally and utterly unacceptable”.

Elsewhere, a UN commission of inquiry found that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Huge columns of Palestinians were seen streaming towards the south in donkey carts, rickshaws, vehicles strapped high with belongings or on foot.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) estimates 350,000 people have already fled Gaza City, though more than that number are thought to have remained.

Many Palestinians say they cannot afford to go south, while others say southern and central Gaza are not safe as Israel has carried out air strikes there too. Some have said they attempted to go south but found no space to pitch their tents, so returned to Gaza City.

Lina al-Maghrebi, 32, a mother of three from the city’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, said: “I was forced to sell my jewellery to cover the cost of displacement and a tent.”

“It took us ten hours to reach Khan Younis, and we paid 3,500 shekels [£735] for the ride. The line of cars and trucks seemed endless.”

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says 59 people were killed and at least 386 injured in the past 24 hours. Three people, it adds, died as a result of famine and malnutrition, including one child.

“Gaza is burning,” Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, wrote on X, as the offensive began. “The IDF strikes with an iron fist at the terrorist infrastructure and IDF soldiers are fighting bravely to create the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas.”

An IDF official said ground troops were moving deeper into the city and that up to 3,000 Hamas combatants remained in the city.

The UN commission of inquiry said its latest report was “the strongest and most authoritative UN finding to date” on the war. However, it does not officially speak for the UN.

Among its findings are that Israeli security forces perpetrated “sexual and gender-based violence”, directly targeted children with the intention to kill them, and carried out a “systemic and widespread attack” on religious, cultural and education sites in Gaza.

Navi Pillay, the chair of the panel that produced the report, said: “The genocide convention was born out of humanity’s darkest chapters.”

“Today, we witness in real time how the promise of never again is broken and tested in the eyes of the world,” she added.

Israel launched its war in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 64,964 people have been killed by Israel during its campaign since then – almost half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

With famine having already been declared in the area by a UN-backed body, the UN has warmed an intensification of the offensive will push civilians into “even deeper catastrophe”.