The Israeli army has subjected Gaza City to its most punishing attacks in two years of war, sending thousands of residents fleeing under bombs and bullets amid fears they might never return, with the United Nations chief calling the offensive “horrendous”.
“Gaza is burning,” Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz said on X, as columns of vans and donkey carts laden with furniture, and people on foot carrying the last of their worldly possessions, steamed down the coastal al-Rashid Street against a backdrop of black smoke rising from the destroyed city.
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Many had pledged to stay in the early days of Israel’s takeover plan. But as the military accelerated the pace of its deadly bombing campaign, turning high-rises, homes and civilian infrastructure to rubble, those able to afford the journey are heading south, with no guarantees of a safe zone for shelter.
On Tuesday, the army killed at least 91 people in the city, with health authorities reporting that one of its bombs hit a vehicle carrying people about to escape on the coastal road.
At least 17 of the city’s residential buildings were destroyed, including Aybaki Mosque in the Tuffah neighbourhood to the east, which was targeted by an Israeli warplane.
As the bombs rained down, the Israeli army continued to destroy areas in the north, south and east of the city with explosive-laden robots.
Earlier this month, the rights group Euro-Med Monitor said the army had deployed 15 of these machines, each one capable of destroying up to 20 housing units.
Tanks push into the city
About 1 million Palestinians are known to have returned to Gaza City to live among the ruins after the initial phase of the two-year war, but reports on how many remain vary.
An Israeli army official estimated on Tuesday that approximately 350,000 had fled. But Gaza’s Government Media Office said 350,000 had been displaced to the centre and the west of the city, with 190,000 leaving it altogether.
Either way, those who left faced a bleak future in the south, where the already cramped al-Mawasi camp, filled with people forcibly displaced from the eastern parts of Rafah and Khan Younis, has itself been hit by Israeli strikes.
The Government Media Office noted a trend of reverse displacement, saying on Tuesday that 15,000 had returned to Gaza City after witnessing the dire conditions at al-Mawasi.
As people fled, the Israeli military released aerial footage showing a large number of tanks and other armoured vehicles pushing further into Gaza City.
The Israeli army admitted on Tuesday that it would take “several months” to control Gaza City.
“No matter how long it takes, we will operate in Gaza,” army spokesman Effie Defrin said, as fighting raged in the enclave’s largest urban hub.
At least 106 people were killed across Gaza since dawn on Tuesday, according to medical sources.
‘Specific intent’ to destroy Palestinians
Amid the brutal offensive, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday concluded that Israel’s war on Gaza is a genocide, a landmark moment after nearly two years of war that has killed at least 64,964 people.
Among its findings, it drew on the public statements of Israeli officials to show that Israel had the “dolus specialis” of genocide, or the “specific intent” to destroy Palestinians as a people.
Palestine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the report. “The situation in Gaza today portends a humanitarian catastrophe that cannot tolerate any leniency or delay,” it said on X.
International criticism of Israel is growing, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday calling the war morally, politically and legally intolerable.
France’s Foreign Ministry urged Israel to stop its “destructive campaign, which no longer has any military logic, and to resume negotiations as soon as possible”.
Irish President Michael D Higgins condemned “those who are practising genocide, and those who are supporting genocide with armaments”.
“We must look at their exclusion from the United Nations itself, and we should have no hesitation any longer in relation to ending trade with people who are inflicting this on our fellow human beings,” he said.
