Dozens killed as Israeli strikes hit Gaza City, hospitals say, as offensive expands
Hospitals report rising civilian casualties as a ground operation widens; hundreds of thousands displaced and humanitarian needs intensify amid ongoing fighting.
Dozens were killed after Israeli strikes hit Gaza City on Wednesday, hospitals said, as the Israeli ground offensive widened in the enclave. Local health authorities reported more than 80 Palestinians killed across the Gaza Strip, most of them in Gaza City. First responders said a strike hit a building and tents sheltering displaced families near Firas market in Gaza City's central Daraj neighbourhood overnight, killing women and children.
A third of the fatalities were the result of the strike on a warehouse sheltering displaced people near Firas market, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said, with six women and nine children among those killed. The Israeli military said it struck two Hamas fighters and that the number of casualties cited by others did not align with its information. At the same time, tanks and troops pressed into the heart of Gaza City, which Israel has described as Hamas's last urban stronghold.
Hundreds of thousands of residents have fled Gaza City's urban center, though many more remain in place under deteriorating humanitarian conditions as health and essential services collapse, according to hospitals and aid groups. The UN had said a famine had been confirmed last month by a UN-backed body.
In Washington, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said President Donald Trump had presented a 21-point plan for peace in the Mideast and Gaza to Arab and Muslim leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. He offered no details but said the plan addressed Israeli concerns as well as those of neighboring states and that officials were hopeful for a breakthrough in coming days.
Hospitals in Gaza City said they received the bodies of more than 60 people killed by Israeli strikes and gunfire since midnight, with a third of fatalities linked to the Firas market warehouse strike. International journalists, including BBC staff, have been blocked from independent entry to Gaza, complicating verification. Video from the scene showed responders removing a body from rubble. Mohammed Hajjaj, whose relatives were killed, told AFP the site had been hit by heavy bombing while people slept, with children and women among the victims.
Elsewhere in Gaza City, witnesses reported seeing Israeli tanks in the Tel al-Hawa and Rimal neighbourhoods. The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli military vehicles were outside al-Quds hospital in Tel al-Hawa, and that its oxygen station had been damaged and taken out of service by Israeli gunfire. The IDF said on Wednesday that no direct strike was conducted towards the hospital and that the circumstances of the incident were under review.
Separately, the IDF released aerial footage it said showed Hamas fighters opening fire from within the compound of al-Shifa hospital in Rimal a few days ago. Reuters cited a Hamas security official as saying that criminal gangs had opened fire at the hospital from outside the compound.
Hundreds of thousands of Gaza City residents have fled the Israeli offensive. During a visit to Gaza City on Wednesday, the IDF's Chief of Staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir said it was operating in the Gaza Strip with a large number of troops, with a focus on striking Gaza City to create conditions for the release of the hostages and for Hamas' decisive defeat. The general also stated that most of Gaza's population has already left Gaza City, and we are moving them southward for their safety. He added a call for Gazan residents to rise up and break away from Hamas, saying the war and the suffering would end if Hamas released the hostages and relinquished its weapons.
Hamas's military wing warned the IDF that expanding its operations in Gaza City would endanger the 48 remaining hostages, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Israeli media cited the IDF as saying that about 700,000 residents had so far evacuated to southern Gaza since the plans for the offensive were announced last month. However, the UN and its humanitarian partners said they had only monitored 339,600 people crossing into the south as of Tuesday. They have also previously warned that the Israeli-designated humanitarian area for the displaced in al-Mawasi is already overcrowded and unsafe. A Gaza City resident, Thaer Saqr, said he had attempted to travel south from the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood on Tuesday with his wife, children and sister. "The tanks on the coastal road... opened fire on us, and my sister was killed," he told AFP. He said they were now at al-Shifa hospital and would not leave, even if they kill us all.
On Tuesday, the UN's human rights office decried the IDF's tactics in Gaza City, saying there had been a sharp increase in the number of civilians being killed in Israeli attacks and that the targeting of civilian infrastructure and destruction of homes was making displacement permanent. It also criticised Israeli authorities, including Defence Minister Israel Katz, for threatening to destroy Gaza City if Hamas did not comply with Israel's demands.
The Israeli military launched a campaign 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 65,419 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health ministry.
UN agencies and humanitarian groups have warned that displacement could be protracted and that the crowded conditions in the southern corridor and designated humanitarian areas remain dangerously insufficient to support millions of civilians as fighting continues in Gaza City.