Gaza City is being pummeled by the most punishing Israeli attacks in two years of war, as thousands of Palestinians are fleeing under bombardment and bullets.
The United Nations chief has called the offensive "horrendous", reports Al Jazeera on Tuesday.
"Gaza is burning," Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz said on X, as queues of vans and donkey carts laden with furniture, and people on foot carrying the last of their earthly possessions, poured down the coastal al-Rashid Street.
On Tuesday, the IDF killed at least 91 people in the city, with health authorities reporting that one of its bombs struck a vehicle carrying people about to escape on the coastal road.
Many had vowed to stay put in the early days of Israel's plan to take over. But as the military ramps up its deadly bombing campaign, turning high-rises, homes and civilian infrastructure to rubble, those able to afford the journey are heading south, with no promise of safety there either.
At least 17 of the city's residential buildings were destroyed, including Aybaki Mosque in the Tuffah neighbourhood to the east.
About 1 million Palestinians are reported to have returned to Gaza City to live among the ruins after the initial phase of the two-year war, but reports on how many remain are uncertain.
Gaza's Government Media Office said 350,000 had been displaced to the centre and the west of the city, with 190,000 leaving it altogether.
Those who left faced a bleak future in the south, where the already cramped al-Mawasi camp, filled with people forcibly displaced from the eastern parts of Rafah and Khan Younis, has itself been hit by Israeli strikes.
The Government Media Office on Tuesday said that 15,000 had returned to Gaza City after witnessing the dire conditions at al-Mawasi, noting a trend of reverse displacement.
The Israeli army admitted on Tuesday that it would take "several months" to control Gaza City.
"No matter how long it takes, we will operate in Gaza," army spokesman Effie Defrin said, as fighting raged in the enclave's largest urban hub.
At least 106 people have been killed across Gaza since dawn on Tuesday, according to medical sources.
Amid the brutal onslaught, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday concluded that Israel's war on Gaza is a genocide, a landmark moment after nearly two years of war that has killed at least 64,964 people.
Among its findings, it cited the public statements of Israeli officials to show that Israel had the "dolus specialis" of genocide, or the "specific intent" to destroy Palestinians as a people.
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