Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza, after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south. /Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
At least 44 people have been killed across Gaza on Saturday morning according to local reports as more countries seek to recognize a Palestinian state and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres insisted the world should not be "intimidated" by Israel.
The Israeli military warned on Friday it would operate with "unprecedented force" in Gaza City, telling residents to flee as it presses its ground offensive on the territory's largest urban center.
On Saturday Arabic TV network Al Jazeera reported that among the 44 deaths it had been told about across Gaza, 38 were in Gaza City.
It was reported that an Israeli air strike on a family home in Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, killed children. Al Jazeera said the air strike hit the home of the brother of Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of al-Shifa Medical Complex, Gaza's largest medical complex and central hospital.
Israel has pummelled Gaza City with air strikes and tank fire in its bid to seize it, nearly two years into the war that has devastated the Palestinian territory and left Gaza gripped by a UN-declared famine.
The assault comes ahead of a planned move by several Western governments, including Britain and France, to recognize a Palestinian state at a UN summit next week.
The military launched its ground assault on Tuesday and has for days been telling residents to head south, but many Palestinians say the journey is prohibitively expensive and they do not know where to go.
The UN estimated at the end of August that about one million people were living in Gaza City and its surroundings.
The Israeli military said on Friday it estimated 480,000 had fled since late August.
Gaza's civil defence agency - a rescue force operating under Hamas authority - said 450,000 people had fled.
On Friday, the military's Arabic-language spokesman announced the closure of a temporary evacuation route opened 48 hours earlier, saying the only way south was via the Al-Rashid road along the Mediterranean coast.
The Israeli military has urged Palestinians to head to a "humanitarian area" in Al-Mawasi on the coast, where it says aid, medical care and humanitarian infrastructure will be provided.
Israel first declared the area a safe zone early in the war, but has carried out repeated strikes on it since then, saying it is targeting Hamas.
Israeli fire killed at least 41 people across the territory on Friday, 11 of them in Gaza City, according to a tally of figures given by Gaza hospitals.
'We should not feel intimidated by the risk of retaliation' said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres./ Jeenah Moon/Reuters
Palestine state to be recognized
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday the world should not be "intimidated" by Israel and its creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank.
At next week's UN signature high-level week, 10 countries will recognize a Palestinian state.
The meeting of more than 140 heads of state and government, which paralyzes a corner of Manhattan for a week each year, will likely be dominated by the future of the Palestinians and the war in Gaza.
Israel has reportedly threatened to annex the West Bank if Western nations press ahead with the recognition plan at the UN gathering.
But Guterres said, "We should not feel intimidated by the risk of retaliation. With or without doing what we are doing, these actions would go on and at least there is a chance to mobilize international community to put pressure for them not to happen.
"What we are witnessing in Gaza is horrendous. It is the worst level of death and destruction that I've seen my time as Secretary-General, probably my life and the suffering of the Palestinian people cannot be described - famine, total lack of effective health care, people living without adequate shelters in huge concentration areas."
Trump seeks $6 billion Israeli defense deal
The Trump administration is seeking congressional approval to sell Israel $6.4 billion in support equipment and weapons, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The planned package includes a deal worth $3.8 billion for 30 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and $1.9 billion for 3,250 infantry assault vehicles for the Israeli army.
Another $750 million worth of support parts for armored personnel carriers and power supplies are also working its way through the sale process.
The Republican president's full-throated support for Israel's military contrasts with growing wariness about Israel's assault on Gaza among Democrats.
On Thursday, a group of U.S. senators introduced the first Senate resolution to urge recognition of a Palestinian state and more than half of Democrats in the Senate recently voted against further arms sales.