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The Is­raeli mil­i­tary be­gan a ground of­fen­sive tar­get­ing Gaza City on Tues­day, slow­ly squeez­ing in on the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry’s largest city that has seen block af­ter block al­ready de­stroyed in the Is­rael-Hamas war. Res­i­dents still in the city were warned they must leave and head south.

The push marks yet an­oth­er es­ca­la­tion in a con­flict that has roiled the Mid­dle East as any po­ten­tial cease­fire feels even fur­ther out of reach de­spite months of diplo­ma­cy. While the mil­i­tary wouldn’t of­fer a time­line for the of­fen­sive, Is­raeli me­dia out­lets sug­gest­ed it could take months.

Ear­li­er in the day, Is­raeli De­fence Min­is­ter Is­rael Katz de­clared that “Gaza is burn­ing” while in­de­pen­dent ex­perts com­mis­sioned by the Unit­ed Na­tions’ Hu­man Rights Coun­cil an­nounced that Is­rael is com­mit­ting geno­cide in Gaza, join­ing a ris­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cho­rus of such ac­cu­sa­tions.