Israel flattens more Gaza towers as strikes kill 53 and famine toll rises

Israeli forces have intensified their bombardment of Gaza City, levelling three residential blocks and killing at least 53 Palestinians, including 35 in Gaza City, as families continue to flee under the threat of new forced evacuation orders.

The Israeli army marked the al-Kawthar tower in Gaza’s southern Remal neighbourhood as a target before destroying the building on Sunday with a series of missile strikes less than two hours later.

media’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said: “It was another sleepless night for those in Gaza City, with the sounds of drones, the constant hum of machines of war, and the explosive remotely detonated robots across the city.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office slammed Israel’s “systematic bombing of towers, residential buildings, schools and civilian institutions with the aim of extermination and forced displacement”.

In a statement, it argued that while Israel claimed to be targeting armed groups, “the field realities prove beyond doubt that the occupation deliberately and according to a clear methodology bombs schools, mosques, hospitals and medical centres, destroys towers and residential buildings, destroys displaced persons’ tents, and targets the headquarters of various institutions, including international institutions working in the humanitarian field.”

‘Nowhere in Gaza is safe’

As bombardments intensified, families were once again forced to flee south towards al-Mawasi, an area Israel has designated as a “safe zone” despite repeatedly attacking it.

Ahmed Awad told media that he had escaped northern Gaza on Saturday as “mortar shells rained down”. He described arriving at midnight to find “no water, no toilets, nothing. Families are sleeping in the open. The situation is extremely dire”.

Another displaced Palestinian, AbedAllah Aram, said his family faced a “severe shortage” of clean water. “Food is scarce, and inside these tents, people are hungry and malnourished. Winter is approaching, and we urgently need new tents. On top of that, this area cannot handle more displaced families,” he said.

From al-Mawasi, UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram told media that conditions are worsening daily. “Nowhere in Gaza is safe, including in this so-called humanitarian zone,” she said. “The camp is becoming more and more crowded by the day.”

She recalled meeting a woman, Seera, who had been ordered to evacuate Gaza City while pregnant. “She went into labour in Sheikh Radwan and gave birth on the side of the road while trying to find help, whilst evacuation orders were being issued for that area,” Ingram said. “She is one of so many examples of families who have come here and now are struggling to access the basics they need to survive.”

media’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from al-Mawasi, said displaced Palestinians there are facing an unbearable uncertainty. One man told her he had been searching for shelter for nearly a week.

“I have a large family, including my children, mother and grandmother. Not only are missiles raining down on us, but famine is devouring us too. My family has been on a constant journey of displacement for two years. We can no longer endure the ongoing genocidal war or hunger,” he said. “Above all, we have no source of income to feed our starving children. Displacement is as painful as eviscerating one’s soul out of the body.”

The enclave’s Ministry of Health reported two more deaths from malnutrition in the past 24 hours, bringing the official famine toll to 422, including 145 children.

Since the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification formally declared a famine last month, 144 Palestinians, among them 30 children, have died of hunger.

Doha summit condemns ‘barbaric’ Israel

Meanwhile, the political fallout from Israel’s strike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar last week, which killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer, has continued.

Izzat al-Rashq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the “war criminal Netanyahu is attempting to shift the battle to the region, seeking to redraw the Middle East and dominate it in pursuit of mythical fantasies related to ‘Greater Israel’, which places the entire region on the brink of explosion due to his extremism and recklessness.”

He said the attack on Qatari soil was meant to “destroy the negotiation process and undermine the role of our sister state, Qatar”.

At a preparatory meeting ahead of a summit on Monday in Doha, Arab and Islamic leaders discussed ways to respond.

Reuters reported that a draft resolution seen at the meeting condemned Israel’s “genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, siege, and colonising activities”, warning that such actions threatened peace in the region and undermined efforts to normalise ties with Arab states.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani called Israel’s attack on Doha on September 9 “barbaric” and urged fierce and firm measures in response.

Sheikh Mohammed said that Arab nations supported “lawful measures” to protect Doha’s sovereignty and called on the international community to abandon “double standards” in dealing with Israel.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said that “silence and inaction” had emboldened Israel to carry out crimes “with impunity”. He called on Arab and Islamic nations to hold Israel accountable for “evidenced war crimes”, including “killing civilians, starving the population and driving an entire population homeless”.

Adnan Hayajneh, a professor of international relations at Qatar University, told media that the regional mood had shifted. “The US has to wake up to the fact that you’ve got 2 billion Muslims around the world insulted, and it’s only the beginning. It’s not only the attack on Qatar, it is a continuation of destabilisation of the whole region,” he said.

US-Israeli relations remain strong

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that ties with the United States remained strong, despite Washington’s unease over the strike in Qatar. Hosting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that relations were “as strong and durable as the stones in the Western Wall”.

Rubio claimed that US President Donald Trump was “not happy” about the Israeli attack in Doha, but maintained that US-Israeli relations remained “very strong”.

media’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said that Washington was trying to manage the fallout. “The US is surely going to do some damage control, saying that the strikes on Doha are not going to change the relationship with Israel, but some conversations will need to be had,” she said.

Meanwhile, Israeli ministers have pledged to continue pursuing Hamas leaders abroad. Minister of Energy Eli Cohen declared, “Hamas cannot sleep peacefully anywhere in the world,” including in NATO member state Turkiye.

Another minister, Ze’ev Elkin, said: “We will pursue them and settle accounts with them, wherever they are.”

Israeli media later reported that Mossad chief David Barnea had opposed the Qatar strike, fearing it would derail ceasefire negotiations. A columnist in the Israeli newspaper Maariv wrote that Barnea believed Hamas leaders “can be eliminated at any given moment”, but had warned that attacking Doha risked torpedoing a deal to release captives Hamas had taken from Israel during its attack on October 7, 2023.

Since Israel began its war on Gaza after the Hamas attack, at least 64,871 Palestinians have been killed and 164,610 injured, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

Separately, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel’s Ministry of Defence is treating about 20,000 wounded soldiers, with more than half suffering from psychological trauma and estimates suggesting that by 2028, the figure could rise to 50,000.