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Spain has become the latest country to confirm it will not take part in next year’s Eurovision song contest if Israel participates, with the head of its state broadcaster saying “the genocide currently taking place make[s] it impossible for us to look the other way”.

The majority decision by RTVE board members makes Spain the first of the “big five” Eurovision countries that contribute the most money to the event to take such action in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Similar decisions over Eurovision have already been made by Slovenia, Ireland and the Netherlands. The RTVE vote was held on Tuesday, the same day as a UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Explaining the decision, RTVE’s president, José Pablo López, said the broadcasters that comprise the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which runs the contest, could no longer remain silent about Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“As joint organisers of the Eurovision song contest, we share a collective responsibility,” he said. “While Israel has regularly participated in the competition, the current events and the genocide currently taking place make it impossible for us to look the other way.”

López added: “It is not accurate to claim that Eurovision is merely an apolitical music festival. We are all aware that the contest carries significant political implications. The Israeli government is equally aware of this fact and leverages the event on the international stage.”

Israel denies it is committing genocide in Gaza. Its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, said Tuesday’s report by the UN commission of inquiry was “scandalous” and “fake”.

The EBU opened a consultation process in July with the 37 broadcasters who took part in Eurovision last year after a meeting was convened, hosted by the BBC in London, to discuss the differences of opinion on Israel’s participation in 2026. Alongside Spain, the other “big five” Eurovision countries are the UK, France, Germany and Italy.

Normally, broadcasters have to let the EBU know by October whether they will participate or not, but this year the deadline has been extended until December, allowing for late decisions not to take part.

López said RTVE hoped that what he called its “visible, meaningful stand” would be heeded by other EBU members and that a decision on Israel’s participation in next year’s contest would be reached soon for the sake of the long-running competition.

“Our hope is that a decision can be reached well before December, as the EBU must be aware of the serious damage being done to the Eurovision song contest, which will mark its 70th anniversary in 2026,” he said.

“Therefore, we hope this decision will be made earlier and that the EBU won’t be subjected to the stress of a last-minute vote in London in December. We believe that, for the good of the festival and the values ​​it has championed since its inception, this matter must be resolved before the scheduled assembly.”

The next Eurovision song contest will take place in Vienna in May. Eurovision is one of the world’s biggest TV events, with more than 160 million viewers this year.

Russia was banned from the contest after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but Israel has continued to compete over the past two years despite growing international concerns over its actions in Gaza.

Slovenia’s public broadcaster, RTV, was the first to announce it would not participate, followed by RTÉ in Ireland and Avrotros in the Netherlands last week.

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Avrotros said: “The broadcaster also expresses deep concern about the serious erosion of press freedom: the deliberate exclusion of independent international reporting and the many casualties among journalists,” echoing a statement the day before by RTÉ that it would be “unconscionable” to take part in the present circumstances.

Iceland’s public service broadcaster, RÚV, said it was considering its position and “reserved the right to withdraw”.

Several Nordic countries have begun the song selection process with entertainment shows that are a major part of the TV calendar, but are also keeping the door open to a withdrawal.

Johanna Törn-Mangs, the director of culture and factual content at the Finnish public broadcaster, Yle, said: “The humanitarian situation in Gaza is tragic, and we sincerely hope for an end to the suffering as soon as possible. Israel’s participation in Eurovision has been a significant topic of discussion in Finland and we have been consistently informing the EBU about the conversations happening here.

“The EBU is therefore well aware of the public discussion in Finland. At Yle, we have received – and continue to receive – weekly feedback on this issue, both supporting and opposing Israel’s continued participation in the Eurovision song contest.”

RTL in Luxembourg, whose main shareholder is the German media group Bertelsmann, told the Guardian it would be taking part next year as the contest’s code of conduct stresses that Eurovision “is a non-political, international entertainment event”. ARD in Germany said it was participating in the consultation process launched by the EBU.

Martin Green, the director of the song contest, said: “We understand the concerns and deeply held views around the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. We are still consulting with all EBU members to gather views on how we manage participation and geopolitical tensions around the Eurovision song contest … It is up to each member to decide if they want to take part in the contest and we would respect any decision broadcasters make.”

Israel’s national public service broadcaster, Kan, which has been threatened with privatisation by Benjamin Netanyahu amid accusations it is too leftist, has already decided it wants to take part.

Jaguar Land Rover has extended its shutdown on car production, as Britain’s biggest carmaker grapples with the aftermath of a cyber-attack.

JLR said on Tuesday it would freeze production until at least next Wednesday, 24 September, as it continues its investigations into the hack, which first emerged earlier this month.

The manufacturer said: “We have taken this decision as our forensic investigation of the cyber incident continues, and as we consider the different stages of the controlled restart of our global operations, which will take time.

“We are very sorry for the continued disruption this incident is causing and we will continue to update as the investigation progresses.”

JLR, which is owned by India’s Tata group, stopped production at its sites after discovering hackers had infiltrated its systems a few weeks ago.

The company has since found the attack has affected “some data”, although it said it could not provide more details of what data was affected, or if customers’ or suppliers’ information was stolen, but that it would contact anyone affected.

The costs of the cyber-attack are likely to be growing for JLR, with production at its factories in the Midlands and Merseyside on hold. Other production facilities around the world have also been affected, fuelling speculation that it could be weeks until systems are operational.

The freeze has also affected suppliers and retailers for JLR, with some operating without computer systems and databases normally used for sourcing spare parts for garages or registering vehicles.

Last week, the Unite union warned that thousands of workers in the JLR supply chain were at risk of losing their livelihoods, and urged the government to step in with a furlough scheme to support them.

Disruption from the cyber-attack could last until October. Thousands of JLR production workers have been told not to come in to work, and reports suggest a number of the company’s suppliers have also had to tell their staff to stay at home.

The shutdown has reportedly led to JLR missing out on production of 1,000 cars a day, losing £72m each day in sales.

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A group of hackers, linked to other serious hacks this year on retailers including Marks & Spencer, have claimed responsibility for the attack on JLR. Screenshots which are allegedly of JLR’s internal IT systems were posted on a Telegram channel that combined the names of groups of hackers known as Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters.

The disruption at JLR comes as it faces falling profits amid the impact of US tariffs and declining sales. The carmaker reported that underlying pre-tax profits dropped 49% to £351m in the three months to June. That included a period when the company temporarily paused exports to the US.

The company also faced criticism last year over its rebrand of Jaguar, and its new electric cars are not expected to launch until next year.

Chris McDonald, a minister at the business department, said on Tuesday: “We know this is a worrying time for those affected by this incident and our cyber experts are supporting JLR to help them resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

“I met the company today to discuss their plans to resolve this issue and get production started again, and we continue to discuss the impact on the supply chain.”

Utah state prosecutors charged Tyler Robinson, the man accused of fatally shooting the far right activist Charlie Kirk, on Tuesday with aggravated murder, meaning the 22-year-old could face the death penalty if convicted.

Jeff Gray, the top prosecutor in Utah county, said Robinson also ordered his roommate to delete incriminating text messages and stay silent if police questioned him in the aftermath of the Turning Point USA executive director’s killing on 10 September.

“I do not take this decision lightly,” Gray said. “And it is a decision I have made independently as county attorney based solely on the available evidence and circumstances and nature of the crime.”

The exact charges filed against Robinson include aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm and witness tampering. Aggravating circumstances elevating the charges to an offense deserving the death penalty were the 31-year-old “Kirk’s political expression” and the fact that children “were present” to witness the murder, Gray said.

Citing information provided to investigators by Robinson’s mother after his arrest in the killing, Gray made it a point to say that the suspect – whose family was known to be conservative – “had become more political and had started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay and trans rights oriented”.

Gray said that Robinson’s mother also told investigators that her son had started “to date his roommate”, who, authorities say “was transitioning genders”.

More details soon…

A long-coveted deal to slash US steel and aluminium tariffs to zero has been shelved on the eve of Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain, the Guardian has learned.

Ministers were poised to finalise a deal this week that would have reduced Trump’s tariffs on British steel to zero, according to government officials.

But that deal has been put on ice hours before the US president’s arrival in the UK, in what steel industry figures privately described as a major blow.

A government source said the deal would have secured 0% tariffs on just a small quota of British steel exports, prolonging uncertainty for the industry.

Instead, ministers are seeking to agree a permanent “guarantee” that US tariffs on British steel will not go above 25%. Other countries face tariffs of 50% on their steel exports.

However, another government source said that under the deal that had been negotiated, but has now been shelved, the steel export quota would increase once US concerns about the source of Britain’s raw material imports were resolved.

The trade deal announced by the US and UK in May was supposed to reduce tariffs on steel from 25% to 0%, but its implementation was put on hold over US concerns about the UK becoming a backdoor for cheap steel imports from other countries.

Speaking before his flight to London, Trump had raised hopes of a breakthrough by saying the UK government would “like to see if they could get a little bit better deal, so we’ll talk to them”. Ministers insist that negotiations with the US over reducing the steel tariff to zero are ongoing.

A government spokesperson said: “Thanks to the strength of the UK-US partnership, we are still the only country to benefit from a 25% tariff on steel exports to the US, reinforcing our position as a trusted source of high-quality steel.

“We are continuing to work closely with the US to deliver certainty for UK industry, protect skilled jobs and support economic growth as part of our plan for change.”

Steel industry figures, who had expected a 0% rate on exports, expressed disappointment at the news.

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“It’s disappointing – perhaps not 100% surprising,” said one steel industry executive. “Some products might not be possible to sell to the US. Others we can pass it on. It could be worse.

“Getting certainty is sometimes better than just continuing negotiations. That period of uncertainty has been really quite difficult to handle for steel companies.”

Another industry insider said they were relieved that UK exports would continue to have an advantage over those from the EU, which face prohibitive tariffs.

Gareth Stace, the director general of UK Steel, said it would be “disappointing if we do not have the tariff-free quota level” but that a “final decision on 25% offers a degree of certainty and potentially a competitive advantage so long as other countries remain at 50%”.

Hours before unleashing a ground offensive against Gaza City on Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu braced his country for a future of mounting economic isolation, urging it to become a “super Sparta” of the Middle East.

The future the prime minister laid out for Israel, of a more militarised society, a partial autarky – or economically self-sufficient country – with limited trade options and relying increasingly on homemade production, has stirred up a backlash among Israelis who are ever more uneasy at the prospect of following him down the path to a pariah state.

On Tuesday, Israel took a few more steps along that path. As its tanks lumbered through the streets towards the centre of Gaza City, a UN commission of inquiry published a detailed and damning report which concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

On the same day, the European Commission prepared to discuss the potential suspension of part of the Israel-EU trade agreement, while the list of countries pledging to recognise Palestine continued to grow – as did the number of states threatening to boycott the Eurovision song contest if Israel took part.

On the news, and on social media sites, there are daily stories of Israelis getting into scuffles or being assailed by hostile local people while on holiday abroad. For many Israelis, who have grown up thinking of themselves as an outpost of “the west” in the Middle East, all this is deeply troubling.

Stocks on the Tel Aviv stock market took an immediate dip after Netanyahu’s super-Sparta speech, and the shekel fell against the dollar. Those on the trading floors who knew their ancient history remembered that the Spartans fought hard – but lost disastrously.

“How romantic to fantasise about the heroic and ascetic Spartans, a mere few hundred of whom successfully fought a powerful Persian army. The problem is that Sparta was annihilated,” the veteran columnist Ben Caspit wrote in the centre-right Maariv newspaper. “It lost and disappeared.”

“I don’t want to be Sparta,” Arnon Bar-David, the head of the country’s biggest trade union federation, Histadrut, said at a union meeting on Tuesday. “We deserve peace. Israeli society is exhausted, and our status in the world is very bad.”

As the ground offensive began, a group of 80 prominent Israeli economists added up the country’s self-harm in billions of shekels. They warned that the attempt to conquer and destroy all of Gaza was “a threat to the security and economic resilience of the state of Israel, and could distance it from the group of developed countries”.

In his speech on Monday, Netanyahu blamed foreigners for Israel’s increasing isolation, which he referred to as “a siege that is organised by a few states”.

“One is China, and the other is Qatar. And they are organising an attack on Israel, legitimacy, in the social media of the western world and the United States,” he said. To the west, he added, the threat was different but equally pernicious.

“Western Europe has large Islamist minorities. They’re vocal. Many of them are politically motivated. They align with Hamas, they align with Iran,” Netanyahu declared. “They pressure the governments of western Europe, many of whom are kindly disposed to Israel, but they see that they are being overtaken, really, by campaigns of violent protest and constant intimidation.”

His remarks seemed to be a reference to UK, France and Belgium, which are expected to recognise Palestine at the UN general assembly later this month and have been increasingly critical of Israel over the Gaza war.

The prime minister’s claim that western European governments were somehow in thrall to Islamism was an echo of conspiracy theories propagated by the growing far-right movements in those countries. Netanyahu and his coalition have increasingly made common cause with the extreme right in Europe and the US, turning a blind eye to the antisemitic lineage of those movements.

As far as his domestic critics were concerned on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s heightened oratory was no more than a characteristic refusal to take responsibility for the consequences of his government’s actions.

One commenter, Sever Plocker, writing in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper and using a biblical reference, said Netanyahu’s policies “truly are leading Israel straight into the tragic situation of a ‘people who shall dwell alone’, cut off from the developed western world, a country that other nations don’t want to go anywhere near, visit, host or much less trade with”.

The chair of the Democrats bloc in the Knesset, Yair Golan, voiced a widespread suspicion in Israel that Netanyahu was determined to keep Israel steeped in war, as a means of warding off early elections, remaining as prime minister, and therefore staying out of jail. At a hearing of his trial on corruption charges on Tuesday, the prime minister did indeed use the ground offensive as an argument to limit his attendance in court.

Netanyahu’s message to his citizens ahead of the Jewish new year, Golan argued, was: “In order to keep my seat, I need eternal war and isolation. And you will sacrifice the country, the economy, your children’s future and your relationship with the world.”

For all the criticism Netanyahu has faced over the past two years of warfare, he has defied expectations by staying in power. Support from Washington – reluctantly from Joe Biden, and more indiscriminately from Donald Trump – has helped him stay in place. The Gaza City ground offensive followed a green light delivered in person by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday, when he vowed “unwavering” support to eliminate Hamas.

In domestic politics meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox and national religious electorates have risen in importance, just as Israel’s old secular, technocratic elites have faded.

Netanyahu’s coalition partners on the far right welcome the siege mentality the prime minister is seeking to instil, as it wards off the prospect of compromise and foreign influence that would inhibit the drive towards a greater Israel built on the ruins of the Palestinian territories.

Amihai Attali, a rightwing commentator and journalist, argued on Tuesday it was time for Israelis to realise they were in a religious war to the death, in which some economic hardship was a small price to pay.

“Yes, this will take longer than we have grown accustomed to fighting; yes, this will be more exhausting and will heavily tax our national and social resources,” Attali argued in Yedioth Ahronoth. But, he added: “We have no option but to wield our swords.”

Donald Trump will arrive in the UK on Tuesday night to a barrage of criticism from Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who has accused the US president of doing more than anyone else to encourage the intolerant far right across the globe.

In what will be considered to be a direct challenge to Keir Starmer’s government to take a more robust stance towards Trump, Khan said the president’s use of the military in cities and targeting of minorities was “straight out of the autocrat’s playbook”.

In a last-minute blow to Starmer before Trump’s highly contentious state visit, a plan to finally announce a deal to eliminate tariffs on British aluminium and steel into the US has fallen apart, the Guardian has been told.

Starmer has repeatedly cited the ability to avoid the worst of US tariffs as a reason for his largely conciliatory approach to Trump, and is likely to face renewed criticism for treating the US president to the pomp of an unprecedented second state visit.

Trump will spend Wednesday with the king and queen and other royals at Windsor Castle, and the pageantry-packed agenda includes a tour, a military flypast and a banquet. On Thursday he will hold talks with Starmer at Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat.

While there are plans for demonstrations targeting the president, the schedule means he is unlikely to see any of them. But as with any interaction with Trump, the visit is filled with uncertainty and political risk for Starmer, particularly the planned joint press conference at Chequers.

In an article for the Guardian, Khan said that while he understood the pragmatic reasons for maintaining good links with the US, Britain should not be afraid of criticising a leader who alongside his allies, he said, had “perhaps done the most to fan the flames of divisive, far-right politics around the world in recent years”.

Khan, who publicly clashed with Trump during his first state visit in 2019, condemned Trump’s use of the military in diverse cities, as well as the way some US citizens had been deported without due process: “These actions aren’t just inconsistent with western values – they’re straight out of the autocrat’s playbook.”

The so-called special relationship between the UK and US, Khan said, “includes being open and honest with each other”, adding: “At times, this means being a critical friend and speaking truth to power. This includes being clear that we reject the politics of fear and division.”

Khan also criticised British politicians and the media for failing to condemn increased hatred and intolerance, saying this had directly led to the huge far-right demonstration in London at the weekend.

“The scenes we saw didn’t come from nowhere,” he said of the protest, which was led by the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson. “For far too long, our politicians and pundits have refused to condemn the rising tide of hatred in this country, instead choosing to dabble in dog-whistle politics and dangerous rhetoric themselves.”

He went on: “For our leaders, silence is no longer enough. The time has come to stand up and say: this is not who we are.”

Starmer has faced criticism for a seemingly slow response in condemning Saturday’s march, which also had a video address from Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, who said “violence is coming”, telling the crowd that “you either fight back or you die”.

But in more robust comments to a meeting of his cabinet on Tuesday morning, Starmer said that the UK faced “the fight of our times” against the division exemplified by the march.

According to a summary of his remarks, Starmer told his ministers “that some of the scenes of police officers being attacked on Saturday, and a march led by a convicted criminal, were not just shocking but sent a chill through the spines of people around the country, and particularly many ethnic minority Britons”.

It continued: “He said we are in the fight of our times between patriotic national renewal and decline and toxic division. He said the government must heed the patriotic call of national renewal, and that this was a fight that has to be won.”

In the first response from the government, the business secretary, Peter Kyle, said on Sunday that he was not disturbed by the scale of the event or the far-right rhetoric heard at it “because it’s actually proof that we live in a country where free speech, free association, is alive and well”.

Asked why the No 10 line had seemingly moved on from Kyle’s view, Starmer’s official spokesperson said this was only part of the picture.

“Obviously, freedom of speech, freedom to march, is a core part of this country’s values,” he said. “But what he’s saying is, when some people see a convicted criminal egged on by foreign billionaire calling for violence, some people are going to legitimately feel scared and intimidated. Some of that will be because of their background or the colour of their skin.”

Wes Streeting used a speech to the LGBT foundation on Monday to say that he found it “laughable” that rising racism and homophobia could be seen as a sign of free speech.

The health secretary said he understood why some were questioning “whether this government is really on our side”, adding that the weekend’s protest was “not the kind of country any of us want to live in”.

The UK is determined to resolve its standoff with the pharmaceutical industry and reverse a 10-year decline in NHS spending on medicines, the science minister has told MPs after a string of drugmakers cancelled projects worth nearly £2bn.

Patrick Vallance, a former executive at drugmaker GSK, said the country needed to increase spending on medicines and reverse a decade of declining investment.

“We are determined to solve this,” Lord Vallance told the Commons science committee. “This is not something [where] we’re sitting saying let’s watch the decline of the industry. That’s what’s happened for the past 10 years. We must not do that. We have to act. Now is a pivotal moment … to try to get this right.”

MPs called an emergency session in response to last week’s decision by the US drugmaker Merck, known as MSD in Europe, to scrap its plans for a £1bn London research centre and lay off 125 scientists partly based at the capital’s Francis Crick Institute. MSD blamed “the challenges of the UK not making meaningful progress towards addressing the lack of investment in the life science industry”.

AstraZeneca announced on Friday that it was putting a £200m new laboratory in Cambridge on hold. It abandoned a £450m investment in its Speke vaccine site in January after months of negotiations, citing a cut in government support.

Vallance, who became a household name as chief scientific adviser during the Covid pandemic, told MPs on Tuesday that the NHS’s spending on medicines had been in decline as a proportion of total healthcare spend since 2015, but said the figure would increase from the current 9%.

“The reason we need to reverse that direction is not just price,” he said. “It’s about saying we need to make sure that we get rapid uptake of the best new medicines and we have equitable access right across the UK.”

He said the UK’s drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which decides which medications will be available on the NHS, needed to be linked.

Dr Zubir Ahmed, the new health under-secretary and a Scottish surgeon, said the UK needed to change its pricing models in recognition of new cutting-edge treatments, which are more expensive.

“We have to look at medicines in a different light … and calculate the economic and clinical benefit on that basis,” he said.

Vallance said the government had not formally restarted talks with the pharmaceutical industry over its medicine pricing mechanism, which collapsed last month without an agreement and has been cited as one of the factors in drugmakers cancelling projects, but ministers were holding “lots of discussions around the commercial environment in the UK” with companies.

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“We cannot afford to lose this industry from the UK,” he said. “It’s very important that we have two large global companies. That matters, that it’s two,” he said, referring to AstraZeneca and GSK.

Earlier on Tuesday, MPs heard from MSD’s UK head, Ben Lucas, who said it was a “sad day that we’re leaving because we valued our collaboration with the Crick”. The company also plans to close its animal health site in Milton Keynes and transfer the work to Austria.

AstraZeneca’s UK president, Tom Keith-Roach, told MPs: “We are involved now in a highly constructive conversation with government at the highest level, notwithstanding that this is an extremely difficult moment in history and a very substantial challenge; the issue of under-investment in medicines has been a continued and worsening trend in the UK.”

The head of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, Richard Torbett, said the UK was losing out to the US, Belgium, Ireland, Singapore and Germany.

The Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to downgrade its key productivity forecast, the Guardian understands, setting Rachel Reeves on course to break her fiscal rules without significant action in the budget.

The government’s independent watchdog has carried out a “stocktake” of its forecast models over the summer, and Treasury officials privately acknowledge the result will inevitably be a weaker growth outlook.

One Treasury source said they expected the OBR to “kitchen sink it” – making a significant downward revision to productivity forecasts in one go rather than taking a more piecemeal approach.

Reeves will respond by pointing to the long-term weakness of productivity in the UK economy and promising to tackle it with a programme of investment.

The consultancy Oxford Economics, however, estimates that moving the OBR’s productivity forecast back in line with the less optimistic independent average projection would knock 1.4% off GDP at the end of its five-year forecast period.

That would force Reeves to increase taxes or cut spending by an eye-watering £20bn to meet her fiscal rules and maintain her slim £10bn of headroom, roughly the equivalent of raising the main and higher rates of income tax by 2p.

Treasury ministers hope to convince the OBR to “score” government policies such as planning reforms, which it hopes will boost growth, but these are likely to be more than outweighed by the productivity downgrade.

When it assesses the chancellor’s headroom against the fiscal rules, the OBR will also have to take into account the additional costs of recent political U-turns, including on the winter fuel allowance and botched welfare reforms.

The widespread expectation that Reeves will have to raise taxes, combined with a late budget date of 26 November has paved the way for weeks of fevered speculation about how extra revenue might be raised.

Reeves is understood to have expressed frustration at the publication of a paper from the Institute For Public Policy Research that called for a windfall tax on banks and prompted a selloff of financial sector stocks earlier this month.

Any plans for tax changes will have to pass a beefed-up “budget board”, whose makeup was announced last week and which is intended to avoid a repeat of the furious business backlash that followed last year’s budget.

The CBI’s chief executive, Rain Newton-Smith, urged the chancellor last week to consider breaking Labour’s manifesto pledges not to increase national insurance, VAT or income tax, rather than look to businesses again to raise more revenue.

A Treasury spokesperson said: “We are not going to speculate on the OBR’s forecast. We are committed to keeping taxes for working people as low as possible, which is why at the last budget, we protected working people’s payslips and kept our promise not to raise the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, employee national insurance or VAT.”

Israel unleashed its long-threatened ground offensive in Gaza City on Tuesday, sending tanks and remote-controlled armoured cars packed with explosives into its streets, in defiance of international criticism and the findings of a UN commission that it was committing genocide in the Palestinian territory.

“Gaza is burning. The IDF is striking terror infrastructure with an iron fist,” Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, wrote on X as the attack was launched in the early hours of the morning, adding: “We will not relent until the mission is completed.”

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the goals of the offensive were “defeating the enemy and evacuating the population”, omitting any mention of the freeing of the remaining Israeli hostages, which was been a constantly stated war aim until now. Hostage families and their supporters protested near Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence on Tuesday, accusing him of abandoning their loved ones.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said it was clear that Israel had no interest in a peaceful outcome.

“Israel is determined to go up to the end and [is] not open to a serious negotiation for a ceasefire, with dramatic consequences from Israel’s point of view,” Guterres said.

Officials from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said two divisions were involved in the ground advance towards the centre of Gaza City, with one division surrounding it. They estimated that the invading force would be met by up to 3,000 Hamas and allied fighters, and said the Israeli forces would advance cautiously.

“It’s a gradual thing. It is not a black or white thing. But yesterday was a big step forward … in operations on the ground,” one IDF official said. “This phase is defined by a coordinated and gradual manoeuvre combining precise intelligence, air and ground forces targeting Hamas’s central stronghold and aimed at dismantling its grip in this area.”

Some of the principal weapons being used in the offensive are old model armoured personnel carriers, converted so that they are controlled remotely, and loaded with explosives. According to Israeli reports, they are being driven at suspected Hamas positions and detonated.

The health ministry in Gaza reported on Tuesday afternoon that 59 people had been killed and 386 wounded in the previous 24 hours, bringing the official toll of Palestinians from nearly two years of war to almost 65,000. The actual number is feared to be significantly higher.

The ground assault was launched on the day that a UN panel of human rights experts published a report accusing Israel of committing genocide.

“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the genocide convention,” said Navi Pillay, the chair of the commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel.

Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the commission’s report as “distorted and false”.

The country faced the threat of mounting isolation, however, as it pressed ahead with its offensive. On Wednesday, the European Commission was due to present a plan to member states to impose “measures to pressure the Israeli government to change course over the war in Gaza”, said the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.

“Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza will make an already desperate situation even worse,” Kallas said, adding: “It will mean more death, more destruction [and] more displacement.”

“Suspending trade concessions and imposing sanctions on extremist ministers and violent settlers would clearly signal that the EU demands an end to this war,” she said.

Netanyahu sought to brace the country for greater economic isolation in a speech on Monday in which he said it would have to “adapt to an economy with autarkic features”, suggesting it would have to be more self-reliant with fewer trade options.

Gaza City residents reported a night of intense bombardment before the ground assault was launched. The IDF believes 40% of the estimated 1 million population of Gaza City and its outskirts have so far left after Israeli evacuation orders. Israel warned those remaining to follow and to flee southwards.

According to UN data, 140,000 people have fled Gaza City heading south over the past month. Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for the UN child protection agency, Unicef, said there was no safe haven for the displaced population.

“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children, battered and traumatised by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict, to flee one hellscape and end up in another,” Ingram told reporters from al-Mawasi, an overcrowded sprawling tented camp on the southern coast of Gaza Strip.

“People really do have no good option – stay in danger or flee to a place that they also know is dangerous,” Ingram said.

The Arabic-language spokesperson for the IDF, Col Avichay Adraee, announced: “The IDF has begun dismantling Hamas terrorist infrastructure in Gaza City.”

“Gaza City is a dangerous combat zone. Remaining in the city endangers you,” he said on social media.

When news broke of the ground operations on Tuesday morning, Netanyahu was attending a hearing of his corruption trial in a Tel Aviv court, and used the offensive as an argument why he could not attend long or frequent court sessions. His critics have long argued he has prolonged the Gaza war to put off elections, stay in office and thereby preserve his legal immunity.

The ground assault was launched in the immediate wake of a two-day visit from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who had pledged “unwavering” US support for Israel.

Once the ground offensive was launched, Donald Trump directed blame at Hamas, telling reporters at the White House that the militants would have “hell to pay” if it used the surviving hostages as human shields during the assault.