GAZA STRIP: An Isr­aeli air strike on a home where displaced people had taken refuge in central Gaza killed 11 people on Thursday, the territory’s civil defence spokesperson said.

Eight other people were killed in strikes elsewhere in Gaza Strip.

Israel has intensified its offensive on the devastated Palestinian territory in recent weeks, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

“Eleven people were killed and many are missing or wounded after an Israeli airstrike targeted a house... which was sheltering displaced people north of Al-Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip,” civil defence spokesman Mah­mud Bassal said.

Several children were among those killed, the emergency services said, and their bodies were taken to a nearby hospital.

Over nearly two years, Israeli military operations have killed at least 65,419 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, figures the UN considers reliable.

Media restrictions in the territory and difficulties in accessing many areas mean media is unable to independently verify the details provided by the civil defence or the Israeli military.

The US-backed offensive on Gaza City came as a United Nations probe accused Israel of committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, saying Prime Minister Benjamin Net­anyahu and other senior officials had incited the crime. Israel rejected the findings and slammed the probe as “distorted and false”.

Large parts of Gaza have been laid to waste, and last month a body backed by the United Nations officially dec­lared famine in part of the territory.

“We lost our children, our homes and our places,” Najia Abu Amsha, a Palestinian whose nephew was killed while waiting for aid, said. “We became beggars and sick.”

700,000 flee Gaza City

The Israeli military said on Thursday that 700,000 Palestinians have fled Gaza City since late Augu­st, as it presses an air and ground assault on the urban centre.

The military said that “700,000 Palestinians have evacuated” from Gaza City, in the north, to the south of the Gaza Strip.

The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, on Thu­rsday said that 388,400 displacement movements had been recorded since mid-August, most of them from Gaza City.

The United Nations estimated at the end of August that around one million people lived in Gaza City and its surroundings, where it has declared a famine.

Israel launched a major air and ground offensive on the Palestinian territory’s main urban hub, in what it says is a bid to root out Hamas after nearly two years of devastating war.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2025