Gaza City, Sept. 21 -- Israeli forces tightened their grip on Gaza City on Saturday as fresh barrages tore through apartment blocks and market streets, deepening a siege that has already driven families to flee in every direction. Witnesses described a city center scrapped into heaps of concrete and twisted rebar, an urban core where the geography changes by the hour and the only reliable coordinates are smoke plumes and crater rims.

By late afternoon, health workers and volunteers were hauling the wounded on doors and handcarts, while morgues struggled to catalogue the dead. Families rushed south along broken roads after new evacuation calls, only to find the journey nearly as lethal as remaining in place. The pattern echoed recent days...