Israeli troops press forward into Gaza City as more Palestinians flee and death toll passes 65,000

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli troops and tanks pushed deeper into Gaza City on Wednesday as more people fled the devastated area, and strikes cut off phone and internet services, making it harder for Palestinians to summon ambulances during the military’s new offensive.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war surpassed 65,000, local health officials said.

The Israeli military said air force and artillery units have struck the city more than 150 times in the last few days, ahead of ground troops moving in. The strikes toppled high-rise towers in areas with densely populated tent camps. Israel claims the towers were being used by Hamas to watch troops.

Regulators said the severed phone and internet services hindered the ability of Palestinians to call for help, coordinate evacuations or share details of the offensive that began Monday and aims to take full control of the city.

Overnight strikes killed at least 16 people, including women and children, hospital officials reported. The death count in Gaza climbed to 65,062, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government. Another 165,697 Palestinians have been wounded since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that triggered the war.

The ministry does not say how many of the dead were civilians or militants. Its figures are seen as a reliable estimate by the U.N. and many independent experts.

Israeli bombardment has destroyed vast areas of Gaza, displaced around 90% of the population and caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, with experts saying Gaza City is experiencing famine.

Palestinians streamed out of the city – some by car, others on foot. Israel opened another corridor south of Gaza City for two days beginning Wednesday to allow more people to evacuate.

Israeli forces have carried out multiple large-scale raids into Gaza City over the course of the war, only to see militants regroup later. This time, Israel has pledged to take control of the entire city.

More than half of the Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes were in Gaza City, including a child and his mother who died in the Shati refugee camp, according to officials from Shifa Hospital, which received the casualties.

In central Gaza, Al-Awda Hospital said an Israeli strike hit a house in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp, killing three, including a pregnant woman. Two parents and their child were also killed when a strike hit their tent in the Muwasi area west of the city of Khan Younis, said officials from Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were brought.

In a statement, the Israeli military said it took steps to mitigate harm to civilians and that it would continue to operate against “terrorist organizations” in Gaza.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel in the 2023 attack, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 others. Forty-eight hostages remain in Gaza, with fewer than half believed to be alive.

The Gaza Health Ministry said multiple Israeli strikes hit the Rantisi Hospital for children in Gaza City on Tuesday night. It posted pictures on Facebook showing the damaged roof, water tanks and rubble in a hospital hallway.

The ministry said the strikes forced half of some 80 patients to flee the facility. About 40 patients, including four children in intensive care and eight premature babies, remained in the hospital with 30 medical workers, the ministry said.

“This attack has once again shattered the illusion that hospitals or any place in Gaza are safe from Israel’s genocide,” said Fikr Shalltoot, Gaza director for the aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the strikes. In the past, it has accused Hamas of building military infrastructure inside civilian areas.

The military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, wrote on social media that a new route opened for those heading south for two days starting at noon Wednesday.

Many Palestinians in the north were cut off from the outside world. The Palestinian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, based in the occupied West Bank, said Israeli strikes on the main network lines in northern Gaza had cut off internet and telephone services Wednesday morning. The Associated Press tried unsuccessfully to reach many people in Gaza City.

The Israeli military said it was reviewing the incident and that it does not deliberately target public communication networks.

An estimated 1 million Palestinians were living in the Gaza City region before warnings to evacuate began ahead of the offensive. The Israeli military estimates 350,000 people have left the city.

Hamas senior official Ghazi Hamad made his first public appearance Wednesday following the Israeli strike on the militant group in Qatar earlier this month.

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, appeared in a live interview broadcast by the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera and accused the United States of being a bad mediator and siding with Israel.

The Hamas negotiating team and consultants were reviewing a U.S. ceasefire proposal when “less than an hour into the meeting, we heard the explosions,” Hamad said.

The strike killed five Hamas members and a local security official and infuriated Arab leaders.

Also Wednesday, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying it condemned “in the strongest terms” Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza. The ministry wrote on X that the operation marked an “extension of the war of genocide” against the Palestinians.

A coalition of leading aid groups Wednesday urged the international community to take stronger measures to stop Israel’s offensive on Gaza City. The action came a day after a commission of U.N. experts found Israel was committing genocide in the Palestinian enclave. Israel denies the allegation.

“What we are witnessing in Gaza is not only an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, but what the U.N. Commission of Inquiry has now concluded is a genocide,” read the statement from the aid groups. “States must use every available political, economic and legal tool at their disposal to intervene. Rhetoric and half measures are not enough. This moment demands decisive action.”

The message was signed by leaders of over 20 aid organizations operating in Gaza, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, Anera and Save the Children.

Israel’s far-right finance minister said Gaza could be a “real estate bonanza” and that he is discussing with the Trump administration how to share the proceeds.

Bezalel Smotrich, speaking at an urban-renewal conference in Tel Aviv, said a “business plan” has been submitted to U.S. President Donald Trump.

“We paid a lot of money for this war, so we need to divide how we make a percentage on the land marketing later in Gaza,” he said.

“And now, no kidding, we’ve done the demolition phase, which is always the first phase of urban renewal. Now we need to build. It’s much cheaper.”

Smotrich, a key ally in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, wants to continue the war until Hamas is eradicated, relocate much of Gaza’s population to other countries through what they refer to as “voluntary emigration” and rebuild Jewish settlements that were dismantled in 2005.

Trump said in February he envisioned development in Gaza turning the region into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

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Magdy reported from Cairo.