Israeli Strikes Intensify Gaza City Crisis, Casualties Rise

Hundreds of Palestinian families continued to flee Gaza City via the overcrowded coastal Al Rashid Road, amid a severe shortage of transportation and soaring travel costs.

While the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza City ramps up, conditions in the south of the war-torn enclave are so cramped that displaced and starving Gazans are sleeping on rubble-strewn open ground, UN aid teams said on Thursday.

“Intensified strikes on Gaza City, including on tents, residential buildings and infrastructure, continue to inflict heavy casualties,” the UN aid coordination agency, OCHA, said.

In an update, the UN agency also noted that several health facilities have shut in Gaza City in the north of the enclave this month, along with community kitchens, which have also closed as the Israeli military operation continues.

The development followed an urgent warning about the catastrophic impact of the war on Gaza’s children — “killed while sleeping, playing, queuing for food and water, seeking medical care” — from the UN’s top aid official, Tom Fletcher.

“They’ve been bombed, maimed, starved, burned alive, buried in the rubble of their homes, separated from their parents… scraping through the rubble for food, enduring amputations without anaesthetic,” he said at a scheduled event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

To address this crisis, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provisional measures that require Israel to urgently facilitate assistance throughout Gaza must be implemented, insisted Mr Fletcher, while also highlighting the Israeli children killed or taken hostage during Hamas-led terror attacks on 7 October 2023.

Other key UN updates from Gaza:

Among many reported attacks in the last week, on 19 September a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl were killed and others injured when their tent was hit in Al Mawasi, Khan Younis, OCHA said.

Amid ongoing famine across the Strip, a two-kilogramme bundle of bread now costs more than $9, compared with 30 cents at UN-supported bakeries in early 2025.

In the week to 23 September, out of 94 attempts to coordinate aid missions with Israeli authorities across the Gaza Strip, only 35 went ahead.

No aid has been collected in northern Gaza since the Zikim crossing was closed on 12 September. This has forced aid partners who provide cooked meals to bring supplies from the south despite heavy congestion on Al Rashid Road and continuing security concerns.

This week in northern Gaza, there has been a reduction of about 50,000 daily meals compared with 109,000 meals last weekend, after some community kitchens closed as the military offensive escalates in Gaza City.

In southern Gaza, families shelter “squeezed into makeshift tents along the beach” or are packed into overcrowded schools. Others have to sleep out in the open and amid rubble, while basic services are “beyond capacity”.

Fighting between Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces has also been reported in Gaza City, in addition to rocket fire by Palestinian armed groups into Israel on 21 September.

Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents sheltering internally displaced people and people seeking aid have been reported once again, with reports of controlled detonations.

In a 48-hour period between 19 and 20 September, at least 51 Palestinians were killed in 18 recorded attacks on residential buildings in Gaza City; almost all of those killed were civilians, according to the UN human rights office.

“Additional waves of displacement,” particularly from Gaza City, have been caused by new evacuation orders by Israel, its ongoing military ground operations and bombardment, OCHA stressed.

The key Allenby Bridge crossing point for aid relief from Jordan via the occupied West Bank remains closed after a Jordanian truck driver shot and killed two Israeli soldiers.

In August, about a quarter of relief items entering Gaza through the UN 2720 mechanism came via Jordan, including food, tents and other urgently needed supplies.

Latest data from the Gaza authorities indicates that in the week to 24 September, 357 Palestinians were killed and 1,463 were injured. Since 7 October 2023, more than 65,400 people have been killed in Gaza and 167,160 have been injured, the health ministry reports.

The number of casualties among those trying to access aid supplies has increased, with 2,531 fatalities and more than 18,531 reportedly injured since 27 May 2025, OCHA noted.

In addition, as of 19 September, 440 malnutrition-related deaths, including 147 children, have been documented since October 2023.