NEW YORK, Sep 17 (APP): Israel unleashed its long-threatened ground offensive in Gaza City on Tuesday, sending tanks and remote-controlled armoured cars packed with explosives into its streets, in defiance of international condemnation and the findings of a UN commission that it was committing genocide in the Palestinian territory, according to media reports.
“Gaza is burning. The IDF (Israeli Defence forces) striking terror infrastructure with an iron fist,” Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, wrote on X as the attack was launched in the early hours of the morning, adding: “We will not relent until the mission is completed.”
More than 100 Palestinians were killed in the renewed Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, medical sources told reporters in Gaza.
The sources said that at least 86 bodies were transferred to hospitals in Gaza City alone amid intensified Israeli bombardment.
According to the sources, nine more people were killed in Israeli strikes in central Gaza, and six others in the south.
Nearly one million Palestinians, most of them displaced from other parts of the enclave, remain trapped in the city under relentless attacks.
The Israeli army has killed almost 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023.
Meanwhile, 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, Antonio 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.
Officials from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said two divisions were involved in the ground advance towards the centre of Gaza City, with one division surrounding it. They estimated that the invading force would be met by up to 3,000 Hamas and allied fighters, and said the Israeli forces would advance cautiously.
“It’s a gradual thing. It is not a black or white thing. But yesterday was a big step forward … in operations on the ground,” one IDF official said. “This phase is defined by a coordinated and gradual manoeuvre combining precise intelligence, air and ground forces targeting Hamas’s central stronghold and aimed at dismantling its grip in this area.”
Some of the principal weapons being used in the offensive are old model armoured personnel carriers, converted so that they are controlled remotely, and loaded with explosives. According to Israeli reports, they are being driven at suspected Hamas positions and detonated.
Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles at the Gaza border. The latest phase of Israel’s offensive involved both air and ground forces. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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.
The ground assault was launched on the day that a UN panel of human rights experts published a report accusing Israel of committing genocide.
“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the genocide convention,” said Navi Pillay, the chair of the commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel.
Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the commission’s report as “distorted and false”.
Israel faced the threat of mounting isolation, however, as it pressed ahead with its offensive. On Wednesday, the European Commission was 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.”
“Suspending trade concessions and imposing sanctions on extremist ministers and violent settlers would clearly signal that the EU demands an end to this war,” she said.
Netanyahu sought to brace the country for greater economic isolation in a speech on Monday in which he said it would have to “adapt to an economy with autarkic features”, suggesting it would have to be more self-reliant with fewer trade options.
Gaza City residents reported a night of intense bombardment before the ground assault was launched. The IDF believes 40% of the estimated 1 million population of Gaza City and its outskirts have so far left after Israeli evacuation orders. Israel warned those remaining to follow and to flee southwards.
According to UN data, 140,000 people have fled Gaza City heading south over the past month. Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for UNICEF said there was no safe haven for the displaced population.
“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children, battered and traumatised by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict, to flee one hellscape and end up in another,” Ingram told reporters from al-Mawasi, an overcrowded sprawling tented camp on the southern coast of Gaza Strip.
“People really do have no good option – stay in danger or flee to a place that they also know is dangerous,” Ingram said.
When news broke of the ground operations on Tuesday morning, Netanyahu was attending a hearing of his corruption trial in a Tel Aviv court, and used the offensive as an argument why he could not attend long or frequent court sessions. His critics have long argued he has prolonged the Gaza war to put off elections, stay in office and thereby preserve his legal immunity.
The ground assault was launched in the immediate wake of a two-day visit from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who had pledged “unwavering” US support for Israel.
Once the ground offensive was launched, US President Donald Trump directed blame at Hamas, telling reporters at the White House that the militants would have “hell to pay” if it used the surviving hostages as human shields during the assault.