Israel says it has opened ‘temporary’ route for residents to flee Gaza City after launching ground offensive – Middle East crisis live | Gaza

The Israeli army said it has struck more than 150 targets in Gaza City since launching a major ground offensive on the Gaza Strip’s main urban hub early on Tuesday.

“Over the past two days, the [Israeli air force] and artillery corps troops struck over 150 terror targets throughout Gaza City in support of the manoeuvring troops in the area,” the military said in a statement issued on Wednesday, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Gaza’s civil defence agency, a rescue force operating under Hamas authority, said on Wednesday morning that Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 12 Palestinians overnight. However, Gaza hospital officials said on Wednesday that 16 people, including women and children, were killed overnight on the territory.

The army told AFP it was looking into the Gaza civil defence agency’s reports.

Gaza hospital officials said on Wednesday that women and children were among the 16 killed in overnight on the territory, reports the Associated Press (AP).

More than half of the dead were killed in strikes on Gaza City, including a child and his mother at their apartment in the Shati refugee camp, according to officials from the al-Shifa hospital, which received the casualties.

In central Gaza, the 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 the Nasser hospital, where the bodies were brought.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the AP’s requests for comment on the strikes.

The United Nations estimated at the end of August that around one million people lived in Gaza City and its surroundings.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists say thet have observed a fresh exodus in recent days, and the Israeli army said on Wednesday that “more than 350,000” had so far fled south. The Guardian has been unable to independently verify these figures.

Many Palestinians interviewed by AFP in Gaza insist there is no safe place in the territory and say they would rather die in their homes than be displaced yet again.

On Tuesday, people spoke of relentless bombing in Gaza City, much of which is already in ruins after nearly two years of Israeli strikes.

Only huge piles of rubble remained of a residential block in the north of the city hit by Israel’s bombardment, reports AFP.

“Why kill children sleeping safely like that, turning them into body parts?” Abu Abd Zaquout told AFP. “We pulled the children out in pieces.”

On Tuesday, the Israeli army said it had launched a major ground operation in Gaza City to oust Hamas from one of its last strongholds in the war-ravaged territory.

The Israeli military estimates there are 2,000 to 3,000 Hamas militants in central Gaza City, and that about 40% of residents have fled.

A coalition of leading aid groups on Wednesday urged the international community to take stronger measures to stop Israel’s offensive on Gaza City. It also highlighted findings by a commission of UN experts that found Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the statement read:

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.

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 more than 20 aid organisations operating in Gaza, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, Anera and Save the Children.

Malak A Tantesh

The bombardment of Gaza City has been growing louder and more deadly for weeks, but in the early hours of Tuesday it felt like an earthquake that would never stop.

“Even when the bombings are not right next to us, we can clearly hear them, and the ground shakes beneath us with the intensity of the explosions,” said Fatima al-Zahra Sahweil, 40.

Sahweil, a media researcher, said the dead and wounded from the night’s barrage had been taken to al-Shifa medical complex, where she heard the situation was “catastrophic”.

She had lost track of the latest news, however, as she tried to make the near-impossible decision of what to do to best protect her four children.

The Rashid coast road, the Israeli-designated “escape” route to the south, was jammed with the exhausted and desperate. Anyway, the cost of a ride was too high.

“On top of that, I don’t own a tent to give us shelter, and they are too expensive to buy. I would not be able to take all of the belongings and supplies I have already bought several times before,” Sahweil said. “Then there is the suffering we would face in searching for water and the lack of empty spaces to stay in. So if I leave, I would simply be going into the unknown.”

Like more than 90% of people in Gaza, the family has been displaced by the war. An overwhelming majority have been forced to move numerous times. Sahweil and her family have already been displaced 19 times.

Now, with the launch of a ground offensive, the Israeli army is calling on the estimated 1 million people sheltering in Gaza City to move south once more. But Sahweil and her family, and many others, have been to the south before and are aware it is no haven from violence.

Israel announced on Wednesday a “temporary” new route for residents to flee Gaza City, as it launched an intense ground offensive after massive bombardment of the Palestinian territory’s main city.

The Israeli military “announces the opening of a temporary transportation route via Salah al-Din street”, spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a statement, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Adraee added that “the route will be open for 48 hours only”.

On Tuesday, Israel unleashed its long-threatened ground offensive in Gaza City, sending tanks and remote-controlled armoured cars packed with explosives into its streets, in defiance of international criticism and the findings of a UN commission that it was committing genocide in the Palestinian territory. Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the commission’s report as “distorted and false”.

Israel’s military said that it expects its Gaza City offensive to take “several months” to complete, marking the first timeline it has given for its plan to take control of the territory’s largest population centre.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the goals of the offensive were “defeating the enemy and evacuating the population”, omitting any mention of the freeing of the remaining Israeli hostages, which was been a constantly stated war aim until now. Hostage families and their supporters protested near Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence on Tuesday, accusing him of abandoning their loved ones.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said it was clear that Israel had no interest in a peaceful outcome.

“Israel is determined to go up to the end and [is] not open to a serious negotiation for a ceasefire, with dramatic consequences from Israel’s point of view,” Guterres said.

More on this story in a moment. Here are other recent developments:

• The health ministry in Gaza reported on Tuesday afternoon that 59 people had been killed and 386 wounded in the previous 24 hours, bringing the official toll of Palestinians from nearly two years of war to almost 65,000. The actual number is feared to be significantly higher.

• On Wednesday, the European Commission is due to present a plan to member states to impose “measures to pressure the Israeli government to change course over the war in Gaza”, said the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.“Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza will make an already desperate situation even worse,” Kallas said, adding: “It will mean more death, more destruction [and] more displacement.”

• Iranian authorities hanged a man on Wednesday after convicting him of spying for Israel’s the Mossad intelligence agency since 2022, the judiciary said. “Babak Shahbazi … was executed by hanging this morning following due legal process and the confirmation of his sentence by the supreme court,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online news website said.

• SBS has indicated it will not follow the lead of a growing number of European Union countries and boycott next year’s Eurovision song contest if Israel is permitted to compete. The decision on Israel’s inclusion will be made by the contest’s governing body in December, but SBS told the Guardian on Tuesday it intended to participate in the 2026 event in Vienna, regardless of December’s decision.

• Sally Rooney, Deborah Levy, Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux and Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen are among 20 authors urging French president Emmanuel Macron to resume a “lifeline” programme for evacuating Palestinian writers, scholars and artists from Gaza. The Pause programme for writers and artists in emergency situations, as well as a student evacuation programme, were abruptly suspended by the French government at the beginning of August over a Palestinian student’s allegedly antisemitic online remarks.