Israel launches ground invasion
Sep 17, 2025
Gaza [Palestine], September 17: Israel has launched its long-planned ground assault on Gaza City, and its troops have pressed deep into the densely populated city, which has been subjected to intense bombardment for weeks, triggering the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Israel's decision to seize the city - home to more than a million people - has drawn global condemnation. Turkiye called the ground assault a new phase in its "genocide plans". Ankara warned that it would trigger further mass displacement.
An Israeli army official estimated that 40 percent of Gaza City's residents, about 350,000, have fled
south while many buildings have been destroyed, leaving families to dig through rubble with their
bare hands to retrieve trapped relatives.
Footage showed huge explosions and columns of black smoke as Israeli warplanes struck the Tal Al Hawa neighbourhood. The blasts lit up streets already lined with ruins from earlier attacks.
Medical officials told Al Jazeera that at least 78 Palestinians have been killed since dawn, 68 of them in Gaza City alone.
Emergency services reported that 20 people were killed in the bombing of the Daraj neighbourhood, where entire residential blocks were flattened. The UN Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory has condemned the Israeli military's "wanton destruction" of Gaza City as "tantamount to ethnic cleansing".
Source: Qatar Tribune
