Israeli military vehicles are seen by the border fence in the besieged Palestinian territory on September 16, 2025<\/p>\n
Gaza City was engulfed in flames before dawn on Tuesday as Israel launched a new ground offensive, killing dozens of civilians and burying families under the rubble.<\/strong><\/p>\n Palestinian residents reported heavy strikes across the city overnight, when the military unleashed a massive bombardment as its ground forces moved deeper into the territory’s largest urban hub.<\/p>\n The military said the number of soldiers would rise in the coming days to confront up to 3,000 Hamas fighters in the area. According to a military official, the offensive\u00a0is \u201cthe main phase of the plan for\u00a0Gaza\u00a0City.\u201d<\/p>\n Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital said it received the bodies of 20 people killed in a strike that hit multiple houses in a western neighborhood, with another 90 wounded arriving at the facility on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cA very tough night in Gaza,” Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiyah, director of Shifa Hospital, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n “The bombing did not stop for a single moment,” he said. “There are still bodies under the rubble.”<\/p>\n Witnesses said the regime\u2019s overnight bombing reduced a residential block in the north of Gaza City to mounds of rubble.<\/p>\n Palestinian resident Abu Abd Zaqout told AFP that about 50 people \u2014 including women and children \u2014 were inside a residential building when it was struck overnight.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t know why they bombed it,” he said. “Why kill children sleeping safely like that, turning them into body parts? We pulled the children out in pieces.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Israel\u2019s minister of military affairs, Israel Katz, said in a post on X that the military \u201cstrikes with an iron fist\u201d at what he described as \u201cterrorist infrastructure\u201d in Gaza City.<\/p>\n He said the offensive is aimed at creating \u201cthe conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n “We will not relent and we will not go back \u2014 until the completion of the mission,\u201d Katz threatened, saying, \u201cGaza is burning.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel has long accused Hamas of building military infrastructure inside civilian areas, especially in Gaza City \u2014 allegations the resistance group repeatedly denies.<\/p>\n The overnight offensive came only hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio put the Trump administration\u2019s full support behind Benjamin Netanyahu in\u00a0a visit to al-Quds on Monday.<\/p>\n Rubio said Washington\u2019s priorities were the liberation of Israeli hostages and the destruction of Hamas.<\/p>\n However, the UN rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, said the aim of the Gaza City offensive is to make it uninhabitable.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the last piece of Gaza that needs to be rendered unlivable,\u201d Albanese said on Monday.<\/p>\n Residents still in the city were warned they must leave and head south.<\/p>\n