BEIRUT — Israel began a ground offensive into Gaza City, military officials said Tuesday, slow-rolling into the beleaguered city from multiple directions despite international opprobrium and even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents remain within Gaza's devastated confines. Weeks of intense bombardment that all but leveled the Gaza Strip's largest urban center made way for what ...

This photo taken from a position at Israel's border with the Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing amid Israeli bombardment of the besieged Palestinian territory on Sept. 16, 2025.

Menahem Kahana/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

BEIRUT — Israel began a ground offensive into Gaza City, military officials said Tuesday, slow-rolling into the beleaguered city from multiple directions despite international opprobrium and even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents remain within Gaza's devastated confines.

Weeks of intense bombardment that all but leveled the Gaza Strip's largest urban center made way for what Israeli military officials said was the ground maneuver phase of the operation to occupy the city.

"We are operating in the depths of the territory ... Our aim is to deepen the blows to Hamas until its defeat," said the Israeli military's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, in a video statement said to be from the border with Gaza on Tuesday.

"All our operations are carried out according to an orderly plan, with the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas before our eyes."

Two divisions — comprising tens of thousands of soldiers — began entering the city late Monday from its western flank. Another is supposed to join in the coming days, while two other divisions encircle the city. Some 130,000 reservists are expected to be mobilized, the Israeli military said.

The Israeli military insists Hamas is using Gaza City as "the central hub" of its military and governing power, according to a briefing from its spokesman, Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin. He added the Palestinian group has turned the city "into the largest human shield in history."

"We estimate it will take several months to secure the city and its centers of gravity, and additional months to clear the city fully due to deep and entrenched infrastructure," Defrin said.

In a statement later on Tuesday, Hamas characterized Israel's accusation that it uses human shields as "a blatant attempt at deception." It added that Israel is "continuing to perpetrate brutal massacres against innocent civilians."

Residents reached by messaging apps reported "insane" amounts of bombardment while others said the Israeli military dispatched what they called "booby-trapped robots" — armored personnel carriers filled with explosives repurposed as unmanned drones — into city neighborhoods.

Military officials quoted in Israeli media say troops are proceeding with caution, with the expectation of some 2,000 Hamas fighters bunkered in the city.

Running concurrently with its ground offensive, the Israeli warplanes struck Hodeidah, a vital port city in Yemen controlled by Houthi rebels. The Houthis began firing missiles on Israel in 2023 in a bid to pressure the government into a ceasefire with Hamas.

The Gaza operation went ahead despite widespread condemnation from Israel's European allies and accusations internationally that it was committing genocide, according to a U.N. commission report released on Tuesday. Israel rejected the commission's findings.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief, wrote on X that Israel's ground offensive "will mean more death, more destruction & more displacement." She added the European Commission will present measures on Wednesday aimed at pressuring the Israeli government to change course.

Germany, one of Israel's staunchest supporters, excoriated the decision to occupy Gaza City. It is "the completely wrong path," German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said in a news conference.

Wadephul appealed to the Israeli government to instead return "to the path of negotiations for a ceasefire and an agreement" on the release of captives held in Gaza.

In Israel, the decision to launch the offensive — taken by the Cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in August — continues to be a contentious matter that has divided the military leadership and spurred demonstrations against Netanyahu. On Tuesday morning, families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas protested in front of Netanyahu's house in Jerusalem.

Despite the pummeling and repeated warnings that the roughly 1 million Gaza City residents should flee south to so-called humanitarian areas, more than two-thirds remain, according to Israeli military estimates. Health authorities in Gaza said more than 100 people have been killed since the offensive began; they added that the few remaining operational hospitals are overcrowded and suffering catastrophic shortages in medications and blood units.

"We are seeing massive killing of civilians in a way that I do not remember in any conflict since I am Secretary-General," said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a news conference. Israel, he said, did not appear "interested in a serious negotiation for a ceasefire and release of hostages" and that it was determined to "go up to the end."

Christoph Lockyear, secretary-general of Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, said that even those Gazans who survived the bombardment on their journey to southern Gaza would "find neither safety nor the basics they need to exist."

"What is happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian catastrophe, it is the systematic destruction of a people. MSF is clear: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and doing so with absolute impunity," he said.

Many residents also say they cannot afford to go to al-Mawasi encampment, the area south of the enclave designated by the Israeli military as a safe zone, with drivers charging more than $1,000. Even for those who could pay such sums, overcrowding means there's no shelter to be found or even a space for tents; and Israeli strikes have hit safe zones in the past.

Nevertheless, news broadcasts on location on the coastal highway south of Gaza City showed a deluge of thousands of vehicles, many straining under haphazardly piled towers of mattresses, plastic chairs, bags of clothing — anything people could save from their homes ahead of what is expected to be the city's complete destruction.

Speaking to reporters ahead of his trip to London on Tuesday, President Trump said he "didn't know too much about" the ground operation, but that Hamas "would have hell to pay" if it used hostages as human shields.

In a later news conference on Tuesday, Netanyahu said Trump invited him to visit the White House in two weeks' time.

As Israeli armor advanced into Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was traveling from Tel Aviv to Doha on Tuesday morning, where he hopes to assuage Qatar's ire over an Israeli strike on the Qatari capital targeting Hamas leaders last week.

A statement from the office of Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said the meeting with Rubio centered on ways to enhance defense cooperation, along with joint diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire.

But in a news conference in Doha on Tuesday, Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman for the country's foreign ministry, said ceasefire talks would have "no validity... when one party wants to assassinate anybody who is willing to talk on other side."

"What kind of talks can be held, about what?" he said.

"Our focus right now is protecting our sovereignty, and we will not look into other issues until this one is resolved."

In response to the strike, Qatar had threatened to suspend its longtime mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel. During a summit of Arabic and Islamic States on Monday held in Doha, its leaders berated Israel and demanded concrete punitive actions. (A collective communique from the summit announced little more than condemnation.)

Earlier, Rubio said he hoped the government would continue shepherding negotiations.

"If any country in the world can help mediate it, Qatar is the one," he said.

He added Hamas had a "very short window of time in which a deal can happen," and that the Trump administration's preference was for a negotiated settlement.

Hamas dismissed his words in a statement on Tuesday, saying Netanyahu bears "full responsibility" for the hostages' lives, and that the U.S. used a "policy of deception" to cover up Israeli "war crimes."

Israel demands the group hand back all hostages, surrender and disarm. Hamas insists on a ceasefire with negotiations that would lead to an exchange of hostages and Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and Israeli troops' withdrawing from the Gaza Strip; disarmament would happen when Israel agrees to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

The war sparked on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — two-thirds of them civilians, Israeli tallies say — and kidnapping 251 others.

Israel retaliated with a full-on offensive that pulverized wide swaths of the enclave and has so far killed more than 64,000 people, the grand majority of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities and aid groups; the Israeli military's former chief of staff said in a recent interview more than 200,000 people have been killed or injured — more than 10% of Gaza's 2.2 million population, a figure that aligns with the Palestinian Health Ministry's estimates.

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