Dozens of Palestinians were said to have been killed in Israel Defense Force strikes across Gaza on Wednesday, as the military said Palestinians continued to flee Gaza City amid a major offensive in the Strip’s largest urban area.
At least 30 people were killed across the Strip in Israeli strikes, including 19 in Gaza City, local Hamas-run health authorities said. Israeli forces continued to bombard the city and other parts of the Strip overnight and into Wednesday, the second day of the IDF’s ground offensive in the area.
The casualty figures could not be independently verified and did not differentiate between fighters and civilians. Gazan health officials said they included several women and children.
The IDF said the air force struck some 50 targets in the Strip overnight, most of them in Gaza City, with some 140 targets hit over a 24-hour period. The military said the targets included tunnels, buildings used by terror groups, cells of operatives, and other infrastructure, but provided few additional details about the intensified operation.
According to reports, Israeli troops blew up remote-controlled explosive-laden unmanned vehicles in the northwest Tel al-Hawa neighborhood and in Gaza City’s south. During the war, the IDF has repurposed decommissioned APCs by packing them with explosives and attaching remote-control capabilities, in order to drive them into areas with Hamas infrastructure without risking the lives of troops.
Airstrikes and artillery fire were reported in several areas around the edges of the city.
On Wednesday, the military estimated that some 400,000 Palestinians had so far evacuated Gaza City. But it remains heavily populated despite a general evacuation order from the IDF, which has instructed civilians to move south to a humanitarian zone.
Around 1 million Palestinians were estimated to be residing in the city before the IDF began preparations for its offensive there against Hamas. In recent days, the pace of evacuations has accelerated to tens of thousands of people a day, according to the army.
That increasing rate has led to overcrowding as people make their way out of the city. Until now, Gazans have only been able to leave via the Rashid coastal road, which has been inundated with foot and vehicle traffic as thousands move south to avoid the onslaught.
But on Wednesday, the military announced that it would facilitate a second evacuation route on Salah a-Din, the main north-south highway in Gaza, which will remain open until noon on Friday. Salah a-Din, a main inland artery running to central Gaza, was used as a principal evacuation route during an offensive in Gaza City in the first months of the war.
Displaced Palestinians headed southward a day after Israel unleashed a long-threatened ground assault on Gaza City, declaring ‘Gaza is burning’ as Palestinians there described the most intense bombardment they had faced in two years of war https://t.co/MQrEsYzN14
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 17, 2025
Still, many Gazans say nowhere is safe and instead have vowed to stay in their homes despite the IDF’s order to evacuate.
“I won’t leave Gaza. There’s shelling here and there,” said Umm Ahmed Yunes, who is living in her partially destroyed home.
She additionally lamented the high cost of moving.
“Where would I find $1,000 or $2,000 for transport costs? Where would I buy a tent? There are no tents and prices are insane,” said the 44-year-old. “Death is cheaper and more merciful.”
Fatima Lubbad, a mother of four, said she had left Gaza City along with 10 relatives but felt the ordeal was unbearable.
“I wish we would all die together,” said the 36-year-old.
“Last night we slept in the street by the sea in Deir el-Balah — there was nowhere to put a tent… I cried all night as I looked at my children sleeping on the ground,” she said.
The military has estimated that, in addition to the approximately 600,000 civilians who have not yet evacuated, there are thousands of Hamas fighters in Gaza City. Additionally, a number of Israeli hostages are believed to be held in the city.
Terror groups in Gaza are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists during the October 7, 2023, attack that launched the war. Twenty hostages are believed to still be alive, while there are grave concerns for two others. The remainder are thought to be dead. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in 2014.
As the ground and air operations in the city intensified, the Palestinian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, based in the West Bank, said Israeli strikes on the main network lines in northern Gaza had collapsed internet and telephone services, cutting Gazans off from the outside world.
Meanwhile, a coalition of leading aid groups on Wednesday urged the international community to take stronger measures to stop Israel’s offensive in the city.
“What we are witnessing in Gaza is not only an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, but what the UN Commission of Inquiry has now concluded is a genocide,” read the statement signed by leaders of over 20 aid organizations operating in Gaza, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, Anera, and Save the Children.
“States must use every available political, economic, and legal tool at their disposal to intervene,” the statement said. “Rhetoric and half measures are not enough. This moment demands decisive action.”
The statement referred to a report released Tuesday by a commission of UN experts, which accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The panel’s findings were roundly rejected by Israel.
Israel has also strenuously contested accusations that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that it makes efforts to deliver aid to Gaza’s civilians. It has accused the United Nations of delays in distributing aid and charged Hamas with stealing the supplies.
Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, known as COGAT, said that nearly 230 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Strip on Tuesday through the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings.
According to COGAT, some 250 trucks’ worth of aid were collected by the United Nations and other international organizations from the Gaza side of the crossings Tuesday to be distributed. Similar amounts of aid deliveries have been reported daily in the past few weeks.
“The contents of hundreds of trucks are still awaiting collection on the Gaza side of the crossings,” COGAT said.
The UN has said 600 trucks of aid need to be distributed each day in order to properly feed the Strip’s roughly two million people amid the war.
COGAT also said that “tankers of UN fuel entered for the operation of essential humanitarian systems” yesterday, and that it coordinated the entry and exit of humanitarian aid workers rotating in and out of Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 64,000 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, in which Hamas-led invaders killed some 1,200 people.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas fights 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 465.
