Gaza City pummeled as Israel presses ground offensive
- Last updated: September 19, 2025 | 23:02
The Israeli military warned on Friday it would operate with "unprecedented force" in Gaza City, telling residents to flee as it presses its ground offensive on the territory's largest urban centre.
Israel has pummelled Gaza City with air strikes and tank fire in its bid to seize it, nearly two years into the war that has devastated the Palestinian territory and left Gaza City gripped by a UN-declared famine.
The assault comes ahead of a planned move by several Western governments, including Britain and France, to recognise a Palestinian state at a UN summit next week.
The military launched its ground assault on Tuesday and has for days been telling residents to head south, but many Palestinians say the journey is prohibitively expensive and they do not know where to go.
"For several days, we've been trying to evacuate to the south, but we haven't been able to find any means of transport," Khaled Al-Majdalawi, a displaced Palestinian in western Gaza City told AFP, describing "intense and continuous" shelling.
The United Nations estimated at the end of August that about one million people were living in Gaza City and its surroundings.
The military said on Friday it estimated 480,000 have fled since late August.
On Friday, the military's Arabic-language spokesman announced the closure of a temporary evacuation route opened 48 hours earlier, saying the only way south was via the Al-Rashid road along the Mediterranean coast.
"The (military) will continue to operate with unprecedented force against Hamas and other terrorist organisations," Avichay Adraee said in a post on X addressing residents of the city.
"Take this opportunity and join the hundreds of thousands of city residents who have moved south to the humanitarian area."
The Trump administration is seeking congressional approval to sell Israel $6.4 billion in support equipment and weapons including attack helicopters and troop carriers, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
Israel's military said it had expanded operations in Gaza City on Friday and bombarded Hamas infrastructure, while displaced Palestinians traumatized by the advance said they had no means to flee.
The news of the proposed sale came days before world leaders were set to gather in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly next week, which the U.N. Security Council is also due to hold a high-level meeting on Gaza.
The United States has held talks with Gulf Arab states about the possibility that they could administer Gaza once the war is over, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee told Reuters on Friday.
Huckabee said there had been conversations around an interim governing structure involving Gulf Arab states, potentially with the U.S. taking on a supervisory role, with a decision on a permanent arrangement to be made later.
"It's a discussion. It's not something that has been accepted by the administration, by Israel, by anyone. I'm not familiar with anything that is ready for signature," he said.
On the other hand, French President Emmanuel Macron sees the recognition of a Palestinian state by France and other Western nations, a landmark step in his push for peace in the Middle East as the devastating war in Gaza continues.
Weakened and unpopular at home, Macron is more than ever taking center stage in international talks. He is to formally declare France's recognition of a Palestinian state on Monday in New York at a United Nations conference co-chaired with Saudi Arabia, as the UN General Assembly starts.
"We have to recognize the legitimate right of Palestinian people to have a state," Macron said in an interview broadcast on Thursday.
"If you don't give a political perspective, in fact you just put them in the hands of those who are just proposing a security approach, an aggressive approach."
Macron argues the move is the only way to bring peace and stability to the region as it puts back on the table a two-state solution, in which a Palestinian state would be created alongside Israel in most or all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem - territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
More than 145 countries already recognize a Palestinian state, including more than a dozen in Europe.
Agencies