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Israeli airstrikes and gunfire have killed at least 18 people in and around Gaza City, local health authorities have said, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet prepared on Sunday to discuss plans to seize the city.
Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of the largest neighbourhoods of Gaza City, told reporters the area had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday, overnight and on Sunday morning, forcing many families to flee.
Local authorities said the latest toll from Israeli tank and gunfire included 13 people who were trying to get food near a food distribution site in the central Gaza Strip, and at least two in a house in Gaza City. An Israeli army spokesperson said it was reviewing the report.
In Barcelona, a humanitarian aid flotilla carrying activists including Greta Thunberg prepared to set sail for the shattered territory on Sunday, two days after the Israeli military ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for some aid deliveries.
Gaza City was a “dangerous combat zone”, the military said in justification for its decision.
Rezik Salah, a father of two from Sheikh Radwan, told Reuters that Israeli troops were now “crawling into the heart of the city … from the east, north and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave”.
In Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Netanyahu’s security cabinet would meet on Sunday evening to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City, although a full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks.
Israel has said it aims to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in – a move that Mirjana Spoljaric, of the Red Cross, said would provoke a massive population displacement that no other part of the Gaza Strip would be able to absorb.
About half of the territory’s more than 2 million residents are sheltering in Gaza City, local sources estimate, although thousands are believed to have left or to be trying to leave, to seek refuge in more central and southern areas of the territory.
Large crowds in Tel Aviv demonstrated against the war on Saturday night and the families of hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza protested outside the homes of Israeli cabinet ministers on Sunday morning.
Separately on Sunday, Hamas confirmed the death of Mohammed Sinwar, its presumed leader in Gaza, more than three months after Israel said it had identified his body in a tunnel beneath the European hospital in Khan Younis, in central Gaza.
The war began with a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – were killed and 251 taken hostage. Forty-seven hostages are still being held in Gaza, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 63,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Gaza considered reliable by the UN, and has left much of it in ruins and plunged it into a humanitarian crisis.
The UN this month declared a state of famine in the territory, warning that 500,000 people faced “catastrophic” conditions.
The aid flotilla from Barcelona carrying anti-war activists including several European lawmakers and other public figures such as the former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau was due to set sail later on Sunday.
Organisers of the Sumud (“Perseverance”, in Arabic) flotilla said it aimed to “break the illegal siege of Gaza” and “open a humanitarian corridor to end the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people”. They did not say how many ships were involved.
Thiago Ávila, a Brazilian activist, said last week that the flotilla, expected to reach Gaza in mid-September, would be “the largest solidarity mission in history, with more people and more boats than all previous attempts combined”.
Dozens of other boats are due to leave Tunisian and other Mediterranean ports on 4 September. Israel has already blocked two attempts by activists to deliver aid by ship to the coastal enclave, intercepting the vessels offshore in June and July.
The Israeli army said on Sunday it had carried out a strike on a site run by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. “The existence of the site and the activity within it constitute a violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon,” it said.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
