Anti-government protesters have converged on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem home, lighting a bonfire on the street outside and calling for his resignation.

“We’ve been abandoned – Elections now!” read one sign that rose above the crowd.

Demonstrators yelled through megaphones, waved flags and banged on snare drums while police officers stood at barricades.

Such demonstrations have grown more frequent as the war against Hamas in Gaza rages on and fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon threatens to escalate.

However the rallies have not reached the fever pitch of a year ago when Netanyahu’s government tried to overhaul Israel’s justice system.

Many in the crowd, which appeared to number in the thousands, also chanted their support for reaching a deal to free some 120 Israeli hostages being held by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.

As the sun began to set on Thursday, protesters blocked traffic and lit a large bonfire on the central Jerusalem street.

But there were no reports of major scuffles and police did not use a water cannon to control the crowd, as they have during more rowdy demonstrations.

The demonstration came as Israeli authorities said 68 people – sick and injured children plus their companions – had been allowed out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt.

The Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, known by its acronym COGAT, said the transport was carried out in co-ordination with officials from the US, Egypt and the international community.

The children and their companions left the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom crossing, and the patients were to travel to Egypt and further abroad for medical treatment.

Earlier Israeli troops stormed the Shejaia neighbourhood in Gaza City, ordering Palestinians to move south as tanks rolled in, and bombed the southern city of Rafah.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said the Israeli military strikes had killed at least seven people in Shejaia so far. More casualties are feared to be under the rubble where rescue teams cannot reach, it said.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed women, men and children carrying bags and food as they ran in the streets after the raid began. Some men carried injured children, some bleeding, in their arms as they fled.

“This is the (Israeli) occupation targeting us, as you can see. You can see the children, the targeting of children here,” said a man carrying a bleeding boy in his arms.

The armed wing of Hamas ally Islamic Jihad said it had detonated a pre-planted explosive device against an Israeli tank east of the district.

Israel accuses the militants of hiding among civilians and says it warns displaced people to get out of the way of its operations against the fighters.

“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately south on Salah al-Din Street to the humanitarian zone,” army spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, in a call to residents and displaced people in Shejaia.

Residents and Hamas media said the tanks had moved in before the post and that people from the eastern suburb were running westward under fire as Israel had blocked the road south.

Just before midnight, an Israeli airstrike struck the headquarters of the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service in Al-Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing three members, the rescue service said.

It said the new deaths raised to 74 the number of staff killed by Israeli fire since October 7.

In Rafah, where tanks have advanced in several neighbourhoods since May 7, medics said four Palestinians were killed by tank shells that landed in the western area of the city, where the Israeli army deepened its incursion in recent days.

More than eight months into Israel’s war on Gaza triggered by the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7, aid officials say the enclave remains at high risk of famine, with almost half a million people facing “catastrophic” food insecurity.