The Israeli military said on Thursday it was in control of some 40 percent of Gaza City, the largest urban center in the Palestinian territory which it is preparing to conquer after nearly two years of devastating war.
Israel has intensified in recent days its strikes in the area of Gaza City, in the territory’s north, ahead of the planned offensive, despite mounting international pressure to halt the campaign.
Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency said Israeli strikes on Thursday killed more than 30 people in the city, out of at least 64 Palestinians killed across the Gaza Strip.
As concern grows over the dire humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s population of more than two million, one of the European Union’s top officials called the war a “genocide” — a term strongly rejected by Israel, but which several governments and numerous rights groups have adopted.
In a televised briefing, military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said that “we hold 40 percent of the territory of Gaza City,” adding that the offensive “will continue to expand and intensify in the coming days.”
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Defrin vowed to “increase the pressure” on Hamas, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war, “until it is defeated.”
Haaretz reported that the IDF was firing artillery shells at unpopulated areas near Gaza City in a bid to push the civilian population to flee ahead of the expected operation to capture the city. The IDF declined to comment on the accusations of using live fire as a method of forcing evacuation.
Israeli soldiers drive a tank inside the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
The move came as IDF assessments reportedly indicated that some 200,000 of Gaza City’s estimated one million residents will refuse to evacuate as the military’s planned conquest of the city nears.
On Wednesday, it was reported that 70,000-80,000 people had fled the city so far, most within the past 72 hours — a figure still far short of Gaza City’s total civilian population.
Despite repeated IDF calls to head south and the looming danger of the coming offensive — expected to take place mid-September Gazans in the city say no place in the Strip is safe and that they have nowhere to relocate. Many also cited fatigue from earlier displacements during previous rounds of fighting, as well as the difficulties and costs of moving, particularly for the elderly, infirm, or malnourished.
With the vast majority of Gazans already displaced at least once during the war, a senior Israeli military official told journalists on Wednesday that authorities expected the new offensive to push an estimated one million Palestinians south, away from Gaza City.
The United Nations last month declared a famine in and around Gaza City, where it estimates nearly one million people live. Israel rejected the assertion, saying it was based on false and “fabricated” data supplied by Hamas.
Displaced Palestinians fleeing from northern Gaza move with their belongings along the Sea Road, in central Gaza, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Deadly strikes
Hamas civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an Israeli air strike on Thursday hit a tent sheltering a displaced Palestinian family in Gaza City, killing five people including three children.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said forces had targeted a Hamas terrorist, adding that it “regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians.”
In Tel al-Hawa, the neighborhood where the strike reported by the civil defense took place, AFP footage showed Palestinians outside damaged tents, clearing up scattered belongings. A pair of blood-stained pink slippers lay amongst the debris.
Israa al-Basous, who lives there, recounted seeing the tent next to hers on fire.
“My children and I were sleeping in the tent when we heard the sound of bombing. Shrapnel fell on us, and my four children started screaming,” she told AFP.
At Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, where the dead and wounded were being received, bodies wrapped in white shrouds lay on the floor of the hospital’s morgue.
Palestinians mourn over the bodies of people reported killed in an Israeli army strike, during their funeral outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
One woman stroked the head of her dead son as his body lay outside on a stretcher.
“Who are you leaving me to, son? Why? Why?” she wept.
UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingram, briefing journalists from a visit to the Gaza Strip, said that “the unthinkable in Gaza City has already begun,” with escalating military operation leading to “the collapse of essential services.
“Without immediate and increased access to food… more children will starve,” she said. “Palestinian life is being dismantled here, steadily but surely.”
European Commission vice president Teresa Ribera, speaking in Paris, called the war a “genocide” and slammed the 27-nation bloc for failing to act to stop it.
“The genocide in Gaza exposes Europe’s failure to act and speak with one voice,” Ribera said, in remarks slammed by Israel as serving “Hamas propaganda.”
Top EU officials have so far shied away from calling Israel’s actions a “genocide.” Ribera is a member of the Spain’s ruling Socialist Workers’ Party, which has been highly critical of Israel amid the war.
In central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, the civil defense said another Israeli air strike killed seven people including three children. The Israeli military said it was not aware of a strike there.
Smoke from an Israeli strike rises over the Gaza Strip, seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Gaza aid group: Boy reported killed is safe
A Gazan boy whom a former Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contractor claimed was killed by the IDF has been located and sent abroad with his mother, the US- and Israeli-backed GHF said Thursday.
Former US special forces soldier Anthony Aguilar told international media outlets in July that after he gave food to “Amir” at a GHF site in southern Gaza, the IDF opened fire and killed him.
Democratic US Senator Bernie Sanders pushed Aguilar’s story on his official social media accounts, saying that the veteran “witnessed atrocities committed using American taxpayer dollars.” After the story was picked up around the world, the GHF began looking for the boy, who they say is named Abd al-Rahim “Aboud” Mohammed Hamdan.
The organization said it used connections with Gazans, and experts in its team, to find the boy and his mother. The GHF says it used biometrics and other means to identify the boy, and found in his possession the shirt he was wearing in the Aguilar video.
He and his mother are in a secure, undisclosed location, the GHF said in a press conference. The GHF shared photos of the boy with GHF staff outside of the Gaza Strip, as well as video of Aboud with rescuers. They also shared a video of his mother speaking with GHF staff.
WATCH: Abood and his biological mother with a GHF humanitarian lead.
“You doing okay? I’m okay.”
Learn the full story of how we found and brought Abood and his family to safety: ⬇️https://t.co/sNdE78biuO pic.twitter.com/1qUq5lfp9m
— Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (@GHFUpdates) September 4, 2025
Gaza man says Hamas killed son at aid center
The IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) published new footage Thursday in which a former Gaza school principal launched a scathing attack on Hamas leadership, accusing the terror group of murdering his son and other workers at aid distribution centers in Khan Younis.
The man, identified as Sa’ad al-Mihsal, said his son Osama, who worked at the distribution centers, was among 12 young men killed by Hamas operatives in a recent incident.
He further accused Hamas of plundering resources and abandoning residents, saying, “Our honor has been violated, our children’s money has been looted and stolen.”
This is Sa’ad al-Mihsal, a former principal of a school in Gaza, attacking Hamas for murdering his son, who was working at a distribution site in Khan Yunis. Al-Mihsal also accuses Hamas of neglecting the residents of the Gaza Strip, violating their dignity, and stealing their… pic.twitter.com/b2KGIKccwA
— COGAT (@cogatonline) September 4, 2025
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 64,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 460.
This picture taken from a position at Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during an Israeli strike on the Palestinian territory on September 3, 2025. (Jack GUEZ / AFP)
A Palestinian-American political activist who has been mediating between the Trump administration and Hamas said Wednesday that a final ceasefire proposal on the table is a comprehensive US deal to end the Israel-Hamas war and free all the hostages held in Gaza.
In an interview with the Saudi news outlet al-Arabiya, Bishara Bahbah said, “There was a meeting in Washington that, according to what I know, lasted six hours, and it was decided that there would be one final proposal on the table: the release of all the [hostages] and an end to the war.”
Bahbah said that Trump is seeking to heavily pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting such a deal and ending the war — a message he passed on to Hamas.
