Israel has launched a ground offensive into Gaza City following an intensified air bombardment, as the UN joins growing acknowledgement of Israel’s genocide.
On Tuesday, reports claimed that the Israeli regime deployed “booby-trapped armoured vehicles” into Gaza City as part of a phased plan to destroy infrastructure and push nearly one million Palestinians into forced displacement.
Israel’s public broadcaster KAN reportedly said old M113 armoured personnel carriers, packed with tons of explosives, were remotely driven into the city to detonate inside residential areas.
Powerful explosions were heard overnight and into the morning across central and southern Israel as the vehicles exploded.
The escalation came after a night of intense airstrikes, artillery shelling, and the use of booby-trapped robots to destroy homes in northwestern Gaza City.
Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that at least 35 people were killed overnight, with many more wounded or missing under the rubble.Israel’s Arabic language spokesperson confirmed the expansion of Israel’s operation in Gaza had begun, just over a week after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told people in the city to “leave now.”“Gaza is burning and the army is striking with an iron fist,” Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz boasted on Tuesday according to media reports.
In an update posted on X, the Palestinian foreign ministry wrote that the “failure” of international diplomacy to end the war is “suspicious and unjustified,” and said Israel’s plans to occupy Gaza City involves the “deliberate targeting of civilians” and is turning the territory’s largest city into “a mass graveyard”.
Subscribe to our newsletter and stay updated on the latest news and updates from around the Muslim world!
Elsewhere, the forced displacement of families from Gaza City was branded “inhumane” by a UNICEF official as the most vulnerable are being pushed from one “hellscape” to another.
“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children battered and traumatised by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict to flee one hellscape to end up in another,” Tess Ingram, the UNICEF communication manager for the Middle East, told a UN press briefing in Geneva.
Death toll rises
At least 64,964 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, as the death toll from hunger climbed to 428, including 146 children, the Health Ministry said.
In its daily update, the ministry said 59 bodies were brought to hospitals in the last 24 hours, while 386 people were injured, bringing the total number of injuries to 165,312.
“Many victims are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” the statement added.
The ministry also said 112 people were injured by Israeli army fire while seeking humanitarian aid in the past 24 hours.
According to the ministry, at least 2,497 aid seekers were killed and over 18,294 others wounded by the Israeli army since May 27.
It confirmed three new fatalities over the past 24 hours, one of them a child, caused by severe malnutrition, bringing the famine-linked death toll since October 2023 to 428, including 146 children.
The ministry said at least 150 Palestinians, among them 31 children, have died of hunger since August, when the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared famine in Gaza City.
The IPC warned that the crisis would spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis in central and southern Gaza by the end of September.
