IDF launches Gaza City ground offensive; U.N. report finds Israel is committing genocide

Some Palestinians woke up this morning beneath the wreckage of their homes following Israel's latest onslaught in Gaza.

Wad'i Nabil Mohamed Salah Masoud, a young boy, was pinned under debris and called out for help. “I kept screaming and screaming and screaming, until the civil defense team took me out,” he told NBC News.

Masoud wore a bandage around his forehead as he walked past rubble, waiting for 26 members of his family to be recovered, including his father, mother and siblings. A civil defense team had been working to get them out since the early hours of the morning.

"I am asking the world to end the war because we are children," he said.

Elsewhere in Gaza, people bid farewell to their loved ones, covered in blankets and white sheets. A pool of blood could be seen on the ground near one of the bodies and a man held up a dead child covered in soot.

"Shame on them!" he said, noting that the child had been killed along with her mother and sister. "This is the ethical army, it is the most ethical army in the world. It kills children. This is the most ethical army in the world, here they are!"

The man added, "There is no safe place in Gaza."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that U.S. President Donald Trump has invited him to the White House.

"This will happen in two weeks on Monday, after my speech at the U.N.," Netanyahu said.

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has called probable European Union efforts to pressure the country by reimposing duties on certain goods "profoundly disturbing."

In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Saar said such a move would empower a “terrorist organization responsible for and continuing to perpetrate heinous crimes, while Israel, a longstanding partner of the EU, fights an existential war.”

Earlier, E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told Euronews that the European Commission was proposing reimposing duties on Israeli goods in response to the war in Gaza and violations in the West Bank.

E.U.-Israel trade was 42.6 billion euros ($50.5 billion) in 2024, with preferential treatment amounting to 37% of that, she added, according to Euronews.

The European Commission was due to agree to the proposals tomorrow. 

Flames engulf a pickup truck loaded with household goods in Gaza City after an Israeli airstrike, according to video circulating social media and verified by NBC News.

“They are displaced children, oh Allah, they are displaced people,” a person can be heard saying in the video, which shows others rushing to help people scattered on the ground next to the blazing vehicle.

A child covered in blood is carried away amid screaming, while sleeping pads and kitchen supplies piled on the truck fuel the flames.

The video reflects other footage seen today of packed cars carrying some of the thousands of Palestinians trying to escape the city amid an intensifying Israeli ground incursion.

U.K. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Yvette Cooper called Israel's newest offensive on Gaza "utterly reckless and appalling."

"It will only bring more bloodshed, kill more innocent civilians & endanger the remaining hostages," she wrote in a post on X. "We need an immediate ceasefire, all hostages released, unrestricted humanitarian aid and a path to lasting peace."

Cooper's sentiments echo those of many, including High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, who said the offensive "will mean more death, more destruction & more displacement" in a post on X.

Cooper began her role as foreign affairs minister this month.

The IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir has defended Israel's new offensive in Gaza amid widespread dismay and international condemnation.

The Israeli military operates in line with international law and does its "utmost to mitigate harm to civilians," Zamir said in a statement.

"In this operation, we are acting to defeat a terrorist organization that proclaims from every platform that its objective is to eliminate the very existence of the State of Israel," he added.

Leaders from around the world have condemned the offensive and called it a violation of international law. Meanwhile, an independent United Nations commission of inquiry has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

According to reports in the Israeli and U.S. media, Zamir has pushed back on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to control Gaza City, raising concerns about the exhaustion of reservists, the safety of hostages and the potential of troops having to govern millions of Palestinians. The IDF commander's stance intensified tensions between him and members of Netanyahu's cabinet, including Defense Minister Israel Katz and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, The New York Times reported last month.

Thousands of Palestinians fled northern Gaza with their belongings as Israel forces pounded the enclave's largest city.

“Blowing up high-rise buildings. It took years for them to build — they flattened them,” Samira Issa, who was displaced from Gaza City, told The Associated Press. “I am begging the entire world, and all the Arab nations, all kings and presidents, to stand by us and to salvage us. We are tired.”

She summed up conditions in Gaza as “destruction and death.”

Amid the chaos of the evacuating crowd, a young boy fed his bird. Naser al-Nabieh pulled a cart carrying his belongings with his remaining children. Some of his children did not survive, he told the AP.

“My kids were martyred, and my house is gone," the Gaza City native told the outlet. “My life is gone. I have nothing left. I want to survive with the kids. I want to survive with what is left."

Ahmed Kafarna from Beit Hanoun has lost hope that the war will end and said he just wants to find safety.

“From the magnitude of what we have seen, we now hope to leave,” he said. “We are exhausted. We are unable to live, and we cannot move from one place to the other.”

UNITED NATIONS — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said what is happening in Gaza is horrendous and that the war in the Palestinian territory is morally, politically and legally intolerable.

Guterres also said he would be willing to meet with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.N. next week. 

Israel continues to receive criticism for its ground offensive in Gaza today.

High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas said in a statement that Israel's ground offensive in Gaza will make a bad situation worse.

"It will mean more death, more destruction and more displacement," she wrote on X, adding that tomorrow the European Commission plans on presenting measures to pressure the Israeli government "to change course over the war in Gaza."

Egypt and Jordan's ministries of foreign affairs condemned Israel's intense assault on Gaza, calling it a violation on international humanitarian law.

Both nations reiterated their calls for an end to the war in the enclave.