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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Palestinians flee Gaza City as Israel says it launched ground assault
amid global outcry
By Oren Liebermann, CNN
Updated:
11:20 PM EDT, Tue September 16, 2025
Source: CNN
Israel said it launched an expanded ground assault on on Tuesday in
defiance of international condemnation, as Palestinians fled the
enclave’s largest urban area in waves amid escalating bombardment.
The long-anticipated incursion began on the outskirts of the city,
Israeli officials said, where Israel’s military has and the
destruction of high-rise towers over the last week.
“Gaza is burning,” Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote on Tuesday.
He said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was “striking terror
infrastructures” and working to secure “the release of the hostages
and the defeat of Hamas.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
Israel is at a “critical stage” in the war as it attacks Gaza City,
which his government sees as one of the last remaining strongholds of
Hamas.
The incursion comes as the United Nations and others have warned that
the assault will worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis, with parts
of the Gaza officially declared . Approximately one million people –
nearly half of the territory’s population – live in and around Gaza
City. Israel has tried to force the local population to evacuate, but
the IDF has said that only about 40% of people have left so far,
numbers which CNN cannot independently confirm.
Netanyahu’s decision to move forward with the operation, despite
growing and the concerns of his own security officials, underscores his
willingness to defy global pressure to pursue the war on his terms.
On Tuesday, an concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,
finding, in part, that civilians in the battered enclave “were
targeted collectively due to their identity as Palestinians.”
Israel said it “categorically rejects the distorted and false
report” as it called for the commission to be abolished.
Gaza City, which had largely avoided the fate of destroyed cities such
as Rafah and Khan Younis over almost two years of war, now faces the
same grim outlook. On Tuesday, at least 93 Palestinians were killed in
northern Gaza alone, and more than 100 across the enclave, according to
the health ministry and hospital authorities in Gaza.
Shaken by a night of heavy airstrikes, Gaza City residents carried what
remains of their belongings as they tried to flee. CNN footage showed
destroyed houses in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of the city, some
entirely flattened, with people hauling bags and blankets through the
rubble in search of shelter further south.
Israeli drones buzzed overhead as locals told CNN the overnight strikes
were some of the most intense they’ve seen in months.
Maysar Al Adwan, from Gaza City, carried mattresses and blankets over
his head, sweat pouring down his face. He said he couldn’t sleep all
night.
“Fear, fear, it’s all fear,” he told CNN. “Explosions over our
heads, all day.”
The assault on Gaza City was supposed to begin only after Israel had
forced the Palestinian population to evacuate to the al-Mawasi area,
according to the Israeli security cabinet’s plans for the operation
approved in early August.
Israel was also supposed to expand the number of aid facilities run by
the controversial US-backed (GHF) to a total of 16 sites. But only
about five are now open, often forcing Palestinians to walk for hours
to seek desperately needed food and aid.
Rawan Al Salmoni, a mother of four, was sitting on the sidewalk near a
destroyed building in Gaza City, holding her toddler. She said she was
mentally exhausted due to repeated evacuations. She said she thought
she would die in the latest bombardment, with strikes pounding the city
one after another.
“We said by God, we will die here. It’s a miracle that we left,”
she said.
Across central and northern Gaza, Palestinians packed what they could
and fled in a desperate search for someplace safe. This was not the
first displacement for many. Crowds packed the Al-Rashid Street coastal
highway as they tried to move south along a road so busy that cars
barely moved.
Standing on top of a pickup truck on Salah al-Din Road, Ahmad Abul-hal
told CNN:“Do you think we’re fleeing to go on a picnic? We’re
fleeing the destruction and the ruins. But we’re going from death to
death, it’s not like we’re going from death to glory. The situation
is as bad as can be.”
The UN’s human rights chief Volker Türk called for the international
community to prevent Israel from invading Gaza City. “It’s
absolutely clear that this carnage must stop and it has to stop at
once,” Türk told journalists on Tuesday. “It’s also important
that the whole world screams for peace. What we see is a further
escalation, which is totally and utterly unacceptable.”
The UN’s children agency UNICEF also warned that “any further
intensification” of military operations will “multiply children’s
suffering exponentially, ripping away the last vestiges of
protection.” In Gaza City, 450,000 children are facing famine and
trauma, without aid and with “collapsed medical care,” the agency
said in a .
The Palestinian Authority (PA) pleaded for a global intervention and
appealed to the United States to step in. “The entire world has
rejected this escalation, considering it a war crime against humanity
and will lead to further tension and instability in the region,”
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the PA presidency, said in a
statement.
But Israel has the clear backing of the US under the Trump
administration, underscored by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit
to Jerusalem just as Israel announced it was beginning this new
offensive. On Monday, Rubio demanded that Hamas release the 48
remaining hostages in Gaza and relinquish power, even as he
acknowledged such an outcome isn’t likely.
“It may require ultimately a concise military operation to eliminate
them,” Rubio told reporters at a news conference, standing alongside
Netanyahu.
Hamas, meanwhile, called the Gaza City offensive an “unprecedented
barbaric Zionist escalation” which “violated all international
norms and laws.”
The Israeli military estimates there are up to 3,000 Hamas militants in
Gaza City, a military official said Tuesday, but the tiny number
underscores the nearly impossible task facing the IDF, comprising less
than 1% of the local population.
“We are expecting to see in combat between 2,000 and 3,000 Hamas
terrorists in Gaza City,” the official said. But there is no apparent
mechanism to prevent those Hamas members from joining the throngs of
Palestinians evacuating south.
The invasion of Gaza City may not be decisive and further operations
may lie ahead. “Gaza City is the main stronghold of Hamas at the
moment,” the official added. “I said main, not last.”
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