Airstrikes and shooting kill at least 38 people in Gaza as Israel
ignores demands for a ceasefire
[September 27, 2025]
By WAFAA SHURAFA and SAMY MAGDY
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at
least 38 people across Gaza, health officials said, as international
pressure grows for a ceasefire but Israel's leader remains defiant about
continuing the war.
Strikes in central and northern Gaza killed people in their homes in the
early hours of Saturday morning, including nine from the same family in
a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to health staff at the
Al-Awda hospital where the bodies were brought.
The attacks came hours after a defiant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu told fellow world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly Friday
that his nation “must finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s words, aimed as much at his increasingly divided domestic
audience as the global one, began after dozens of delegates from
multiple nations walked out of the U.N. General Assembly hall en masse
Friday morning as he began speaking.
International pressure on Israel to end the war is increasing, as is
Israel's isolation, with a growing list of countries deciding recently
to recognize Palestinian statehood — something Israel rejects.
Countries have been lobbying U.S. President Donald Trump to press Israel
for a ceasefire. On Friday, Trump told reporters on the White House lawn
that he believes the U.S. is close to achieving a deal on easing
fighting in Gaza that “will get the hostages back” and “end the war.”
Trump and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet Monday, and Trump said on
social media Friday that “very inspired and productive discussions” and
“intense negotiations” about Gaza are ongoing with countries in the
region.
Yet, Israel is pressing ahead with another major ground operation in
Gaza City, which experts say is experiencing famine. More than 300,000
people have fled, but up to 700,000 are still there, many because they
can’t afford to relocate.
The strikes Saturday morning demolished a house in Gaza City's Tufah
neighborhood, killing at least 11 people, more than half of them women
and children, according to the Al-Ahly Hospital where the bodies were
brought. Four other people were killed when an airstrike hit their homes
in the Shati refugee camp, according to Shifa hospital.
Six other Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire while seeking aid
in southern and central Gaza, according to Nasser and Al Awda hospitals
where the bodies were brought.
Israel's army did not immediately respond about the airstrikes or the
gunfire.
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Israeli army flares drift over buildings destroyed during Israeli
ground and air operations in the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from
southern Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Hospitals and health clinics in Gaza City are on the brink of
collapse. Nearly two weeks into the offensive, two clinics have been
destroyed by airstrikes, two hospitals shut down after being damaged
and others are barely functioning, with medicine, equipment, food
and fuel in short supply.
Many patients and staff have been forced to flee hospitals, leaving
behind only a few doctors and nurses to tend to children in
incubators or other patients too ill to move.
On Friday, aid group Doctors Without Borders said it was forced to
suspend activities in Gaza City amid an intensified Israeli
offensive. The group said Israeli tanks were less than half a mile
from its health care facilities and the escalating attacks have
created an “unacceptable level of risk" for its staff.
Meanwhile, the food situation in the north has also worsened, as
Israel has halted aid deliveries through its crossing into northern
Gaza since Sept. 12 and has increasingly rejected U.N. requests to
bring supplies from southern Gaza into the north, the U.N. Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 65,000 people and
wounded more than 167,000 others, according to the Gaza Health
Ministry. It doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants,
but says women and children make up around half the fatalities. The
ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, but U.N. agencies and
many independent experts consider its figures to be the most
reliable estimate of wartime casualties.
Israel’s campaign was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed
into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking
251 hostage. Forty-eight captives remain in Gaza, around 20 of them
believed by Israel to be alive, after most of the rest were freed in
ceasefires or other deals.
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Magdy reported from Cairo, Egypt.
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