Israel to call 60,000 reservists in offensive on Gaza City

Israeli offensive on Gaza City. - DW news.

Israel has announced the start of ground operations in Gaza City, prompting the remaining civilians in the area to flee to the south. The military is expected to call up 60,000 reservists for the offensive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed he approved the new offensive and "at the same time" instructed Israel to begin negotiations to bring about the return of hostages in Gaza and "the end of the war under conditions acceptable to Israel."

NGO warns Gaza children's 'psychological scars will last a lifetime'

With Israel's offensive in Gaza City underway, DW spoke with Dan Stewart from the UK-based aid group Save the Children.

Stewart, speaking from Deir al-Balah south of Gaza City, said that the dire humanitarian situation has left many children traumatized, severely malnourished and too weak to cry.

A joint investigation from three media houses alleges that more than four out of five people killed in Gaza up until May 2025 were civilians.

The investigation by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language Local Call and The Guardian analyzed data from a classified Israeli military database.

The database lists 8,900 militant fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as dead or probably dead as of May 2025.

That represents only 17% of the 53,000 Palestinians killed in Israel's war in Gaza up until that time, meaning some 83% of deaths are civilians, the investigation found.

The figures "contradict by a huge margin the public statements of Israeli army and government officials throughout the war, which have generally claimed a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio of civilian to militant casualties," +972 Magazine writes.

In their articles on the investigation, the news organizations cited the Israeli military as saying the figures presented in the investigation were incorrect and didn't reflect the data available in the IDF's systems.

The death tolls published by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry don't distinguish between civilians and militants. – DW News