More than half of the estimated one million Palestinians residing in Gaza City have evacuated to the Strip’s south, the military said Sunday, as Israeli troops moved deeper into the city amid an expanding offensive against Hamas in the area.
“Our operations against Hamas have moved deeper into Gaza City, targeting their main stronghold. We are engaged in combat, facing terrorists both above and below ground,” Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said in an English-language video statement Sunday evening.
His remarks came after, earlier that day, two rockets were fired from northern Gaza at Israel, causing no injuries.
Defrin added that “Israel continues to ensure that corridors remain open for civilians to move south, toward safer areas. Until now, 550,000 people have moved south.”
“The IDF is continuing to enhance the humanitarian area and encourage residents to leave the combat zones. At Kerem Shalom crossing, thousands of tents and supplies are waiting right now for collection by the UN and international organizations,” he continued.
“We call on the international organizations to take this aid and deliver it directly to the Gazan people. In recent weeks alone, Israel has enabled the entry of over 24,000 tents into Gaza. Israel is ensuring civilians can keep out of harm’s way, enabling access to food, shelter and medicine,” Defrin said.
Defrin asserted that this week, “Hamas opened fire on a UN team, and used stolen UN vehicles to block the construction of a new road for future aid trucks,” as well as “robbed four UNICEF aid trucks at gunpoint — depriving 2,700 infants of baby formula.”
“Hamas continues to violently obstruct civilians from evacuating combat zones. Hamas doesn’t protect Gazans; they sacrifice them,” he said. “Hamas has shown the world its true strategy: to exploit its own people and prolong this war. That strategy will not succeed.”
He asserted the IDF has “no other choice but to fight for our future. Our forces are working day and night, turning over every stone, to bring our hostages home, dismantle Hamas’s terror networks, and secure a safer region for all.”
The IDF spokesman pointed out that, “as the Jewish New Year arrives, 48 hostages remain in the grip of Hamas. Their captivity is an unfinished chapter of this war — and we will not close it until they are home. We have no other choice.”
Around one million Palestinians were estimated to be residing in Gaza City before the IDF launched its new offensive. The military has ordered Palestinians in all areas of Gaza City to evacuate to an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” in the Strip’s south.
The IDF said Sunday that despite its efforts, it has identified attempts by Hamas to prevent civilians from moving to southern Gaza, “in violation of international law, while cruelly exploiting the civilian population as a human shield for terror activities.”
Three IDF divisions, the 162nd, 98th and 36th, completed their entry to Gaza City in recent days, and have begun “operations in the Hamas terror strongholds” in the area, the army said Sunday.
Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health authorities said Sunday that Israeli strikes killed more than 40 people, including 19 women and children. The figures cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Health officials at Shifa Hospital, where most of the bodies were brought, said the dead included 14 people killed in a strike late Saturday, which hit a residential block in the southern side of the city. Health staff said a nurse who worked at the hospital was among the dead, along with his wife and three children.
Another strike that targeted a group of people in front of a clinic in the Bureij refugee camp (historically named, with no relation to war refugees) in central Gaza killed at least eight Palestinians, according to the Al-Awda Hospital. The dead include four children and two women, the hospital said. Another 22 people were wounded, it said.
Israel did not immediately comment on the individual strikes.
The war in Gaza began October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault. Terror groups in the Strip still hold 48 captives, of whom 20-22 are believed by Israel to be alive.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 65,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 469. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.