Israel ramps up strikes on Gaza City, killing at least 32 people

A barrage of air strikes has killed at least 32 people across Gaza City as Israel ramps up its offensive there and urges Palestinians to evacuate, medical staff reported.

The dead included 12 children, according to the morgue in Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were taken.

Israel has intensified strikes across Gaza City, destroying high-rise buildings and accusing Hamas of putting surveillance equipment in them.

It has ordered residents to leave, part of an offensive aimed at taking over the largest Palestinian city, which it says is Hamas’s last stronghold.

Hundreds of thousands of people remain there, struggling under conditions of famine.

One of the strikes overnight and into early morning on Saturday hit a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, killing a family of 10, including a mother and her three children, said health officials. Images showed the strikes hitting followed by plumes of smoke.

The number of people leaving has risen in recent weeks, according to aid workers, but many families remain stuck because of the cost of finding transport and housing, while others have been displaced too many times and do not want to move again, not trusting that anywhere in the enclave is safe.

On Saturday, Israel’s army told the remaining Palestinians in Gaza City to leave immediately and move south to what it is calling a humanitarian zone.

Army spokesman Avichay Adraee said more than a quarter of a million people had left the city — from an estimated one million who live in that area of north Gaza.

The United Nations put the number of people who have left at more than 100,000 between mid-August and mid-September. The UN and aid groups have warned that displacing hundreds of thousands of people will exacerbate the dire humanitarian crisis.

Sites in southern Gaza where Israel is telling people to go are overcrowded, according to the UN.

An initiative headed by the UN to take temporary shelters into Gaza said more than 86,000 tents and other supplies were still awaiting clearance to enter as of last week.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that seven people including children had died from malnutrition-related causes over the past 24 hours, raising the toll to 420, including 145 children, since the war began.

The bombardment on Friday night across Gaza City came days after Israel launched a strike targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar, intensifying its campaign against the militant group and endangering negotiations over ending the war in Gaza.

Families of the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza are pleading with the government to halt the offensive, worried it will kill their relatives. There are 48 hostages still inside Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7 2023, abducting 251 people and killing 1,200, mostly civilians.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 64,803 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says around half of those killed were women and children.

Large parts of major cities have been completely destroyed and around 90% of two million Palestinians have been displaced.