Israel ramps up strikes on Gaza City and hospital says at least 32 are dead

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — A barrage of airstrikes killed at least 32 people across Gaza City as Israel ramps up its offensive there and urges Palestinians to evacuate, medical staff reported Saturday.

The dead included 12 children, according to the morgue in Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were brought.

Israel in recent day has intensified strikes across Gaza City, destroying multiple high-rise buildings and accusing Hamas of putting surveillance equipment in them.

On Saturday the army said it struck another high-rise used by Hamas in the area of Gaza City. It has ordered residents to leave, part of an offensive aimed at taking over Gaza territory’s largest city, which it says is Hamas' last stronghold. Hundreds of thousands of people remain there, struggling under conditions of famine.

One of the strikes overnight and into early morning Saturday hit a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, killing a family of 10, including a mother and her three children, said health officials. The Palestinian Football Association said a player for the Al-Helal Sporting Club, Mohammed Ramez Sultan, was killed in the strikes with 14 members of his family. Images showed the strikes hitting followed by plumes of smoke.

Israel's army didn't immediately respond to questions about the strikes.

Meanwhile, relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a deal to release their loved ones and criticized what they said was a counterproductive approach by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in securing a resolution.

Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, described as a “spectacular failure” Israel's attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar this week.

“President Trump said yesterday that every time there is progress in the negotiations, Netanyahu bombs someone. But it wasn’t Hamas leaders he tried to bomb — it was our chance, as families, to bring our loved ones home,” Zangauker said.

In the wake of escalating hostilities and calls to evacuate the city, the number of people leaving has spiked in recent weeks, according to aid workers. However, many families remain stuck because of the cost of finding transportation and housing, while others having been displaced too many times and don’t want to move again, not trusting that anywhere in the enclave is safe.

In a message on social media Saturday, Israel's army told the remaining Palestinians in Gaza City to leave “immediately” and move south to what it's calling a humanitarian zone. Army spokesman Avichay Adraee said more than a quarter of a million people had left Gaza City, from an estimated 1 million who live in the area of north Gaza around the city.

The United Nations however, put the number of people who have left at around 100,000 between mid-August and mid-September. The U.N. and aid groups have warned that displacing hundreds of thousands of people will exacerbate the dire humanitarian crisis. Sites in southern Gaza where Israel is telling people to go are overcrowded, according to the U.N., and it can cost money to move, which many people don't have.

An initiative headed by the U.N. to bring temporary shelters into Gaza said more than 86,000 tents and other supplies were still awaiting clearance to enter Gaza as of last week.

Gaza's Health Ministry said Saturday that seven people including children died from malnutrition-related causes over the past 24 hours, raising the toll to 420, including 145 children, since the war began.

The bombardment Friday night across Gaza City came days after Israel launched a strike targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar, intensifying its campaign against the militant group and endangering negotiations over ending the war in Gaza.

Families of the hostages still held in Gaza are pleading with Israel to halt the offensive, worried it'll kill their relatives. There are 48 hostages still inside Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, abducting 251 people and killing some 1,200, mostly civilians. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,803 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says around half of those killed were women and children. Large parts of major cities have been completely destroyed and around 90% of some 2 million Palestinians have been displaced.

Follow the AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Palestinians run for cover during an Israeli military strike on a building in Gaza City, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

Palestinians run for cover during an Israeli military strike on a building in Gaza City, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli military strike on a building in Gaza City, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

Palestinians evacuate a man who was injured in an Israeli military strike on a building in Gaza City, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

Palestinians evacuate a man who was injured in an Israeli military strike on a building in Gaza City, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

Palestinians inspect the rubble of a building after an Israeli military strike in Gaza City, Friday, Sept. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

Smoke rises following an Israeli military strike on a building in Gaza City, Friday, Sept. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

A bomb dropped during an Israeli military strike approaches a building in Gaza City, Friday, Sept. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli military strike on a building in Gaza City, Friday, Sept. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun)

NUUK, Greenland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has turned the Arctic island of Greenland into a geopolitical hotspot with his demands to own it and suggestions that the U.S. could take it by force.

The island is a semiautonomous region of Denmark, and Denmark's foreign minister said Wednesday after a meeting at the White House that a “ fundamental disagreement ” remains with Trump over the island.

The crisis is dominating the lives of Greenlanders and "people are not sleeping, children are afraid, and it just fills everything these days. And we can’t really understand it,” Naaja Nathanielsen, a Greenlandic minister said at a meeting with lawmakers in Britain’s Parliament this week.

Here's a look at what Greenlanders have been saying:

Trump has dismissed Denmark’s defenses in Greenland, suggesting it’s “two dog sleds.”

By saying that, Trump is “undermining us as a people,” Mari Laursen told AP.

Laursen said she used to work on a fishing trawler but is now studying law. She approached AP to say she thought previous examples of cooperation between Greenlanders and Americans are “often overlooked when Trump talks about dog sleds.”

She said during World War II, Greenlandic hunters on their dog sleds worked in conjunction with the U.S. military to detect Nazi German forces on the island.

“The Arctic climate and environment is so different from maybe what they (Americans) are used to with the warships and helicopters and tanks. A dog sled is more efficient. It can go where no warship and helicopter can go,” Laursen said.

Trump has repeatedly claimed Russian and Chinese ships are swarming the seas around Greenland. Plenty of Greenlanders who spoke to AP dismissed that claim.

“I think he (Trump) should mind his own business,” said Lars Vintner, a heating engineer.

“What's he going to do with Greenland? He speaks of Russians and Chinese and everything in Greenlandic waters or in our country. We are only 57,000 people. The only Chinese I see is when I go to the fast food market. And every summer we go sailing and we go hunting and I never saw Russian or Chinese ships here in Greenland,” he said.

Down at Nuuk's small harbor, Gerth Josefsen spoke to AP as he attached small fish as bait to his lines. He said, “I don't see them (the ships)” and said he had only seen “a Russian fishing boat ten years ago.”

Maya Martinsen, 21, a shop worker, told AP she doesn't believe Trump wants Greenland to enhance America's security.

“I know it’s not national security. I think it’s for the oils and minerals that we have that are untouched,” she said, suggesting the Americans are treating her home like a “business trade.”

She said she thought it was good that American, Greenlandic and Danish officials met in the White House Wednesday and said she believes that “the Danish and Greenlandic people are mostly on the same side,” despite some Greenlanders wanting independence.

“It is nerve-wrecking, that the Americans aren’t changing their mind,” she said, adding that she welcomed the news that Denmark and its allies would be sending troops to Greenland because “it’s important that the people we work closest with, that they send support.”

Tuuta Mikaelsen, a 22-year-old student, told AP that she hopes the U.S. got the message from Danish and Greenlandic officials to “back off.”

She said she didn't want to join the United States because in Greenland “there are laws and stuff, and health insurance .. .we can go to the doctors and nurses ... we don’t have to pay anything,” she said adding "I don’t want the U.S. to take that away from us.”

In Greenland's parliament, Juno Berthelsen, MP for the Naleraq opposition party that campaigns for independence in the Greenlandic parliament told AP that he has done multiple media interviews every day for the last two weeks.

When asked by AP what he would say to Trump and Vice President JD Vance if he had the chance, Berthelsen said:

“I would tell them, of course, that — as we’ve seen — a lot of Republicans as well as Democrats are not in favor of having such an aggressive rhetoric and talk about military intervention, invasion. So we would tell them to move beyond that and continue this diplomatic dialogue and making sure that the Greenlandic people are the ones who are at the very center of this conversation.”

“It is our country,” he said. “Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people.”

Kwiyeon Ha and Evgeniy Maloletka contributed to this report.

FILE - A woman pushes a stroller with her children in Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

Military vessel HDMS Knud Rasmussen of the Royal Danish Navy patrols near Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Juno Berthelsen, MP for the Naleraq opposition party that campaigns for independence in the Greenlandic parliament poses for photo at his office in Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Fisherman Gerth Josefsen prepares fishing lines at the harbour of Nuuk, Greenland, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

A woman walks on a street past a Greenlandic national flag in Nuuk, Greenland, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)