Israeli military sends tanks into parts of city in central Gaza for first time since it launched the war on Gaza in October 2023.
At least 65 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza, medical sources say, as the Israeli military sent tanks into areas of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza for the first time since Israel began its assault on the besieged territory in October 2023.
Israel on Monday launched the ground offensive on southern and eastern areas of the city that is packed with displaced Palestinians, a day after its military issued a forced displacement order for residents in the areas, forcing thousands of people to flee west towards the Mediterranean coast and south to Khan Younis.
Tank shelling in the area hit houses and mosques, killing at least three Palestinians and wounding several, the Reuters news agency reported, quoting local medics.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, media’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said gunfire was audible as Israeli tanks rolled into the area on Monday morning.
“We can see that the entire city is under Israeli attack,” he said. “We did not manage to sleep last night.”
“There has been an ongoing Israeli bombardment. Israeli jets, tanks and naval gunboats continue to strike multiple residential areas. Three more squares were destroyed in the city, and then residential houses were flattened.”
He said many Deir el-Balah residents fled using donkey carts and other modes of transport.
United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said two UN guesthouses in the city were “struck, despite parties having been informed of the locations of UN premises, which are inviolable. These locations – as with all civilian sites – must be protected, regardless of evacuation orders.”
Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says the forced displacement threat that preceded the Israeli army’s ground invasion of Deir el-Balah has already displaced up to 80,000 Palestinians.
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said it ambushed invading Israeli troops in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
Fighters detonated a “powerful landmine” in the Umm Dhahir area south of the city as a Merkava tank advanced, it said in a short statement. It is unclear if there were any casualties.
Medical sources told media that at least 65 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Monday, including 11 aid seekers.
In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, an Israeli air strike killed at least five people, including a husband and wife and their two children, in a tent, medics said.
Israel intensifies attacks
Five other Palestinians were killed in a separate Israeli bombardment in Jabalia al-Balad in the north.
Earlier, the Palestine Red Crescent Society reported that its teams had recovered the body of one person and evacuated three wounded after an Israeli artillery strike on the nearby Jabalia al-Nazla area.
On Sunday, Gaza health authorities reported at least 19 people had starved to death in one day, highlighting the desperate situation under the Israeli aid blockade.
In an interview with media, the World Food Programme’s Palestine representative, Antoine Renard, said the United Nations agency has warned for “weeks” that Palestinians in Gaza are facing starvation.
“You have a level of despair that people are ready to risk their lives just to reach any of the assistance actually coming into Gaza,” Renard said from occupied East Jerusalem.
“[There’s a] soaring number of people facing malnutrition, and we can really see that the situation is really getting to levels that we’ve never seen ever before.”
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said it is receiving “desperate messages of starvation” from inside Gaza, including from its staff, as humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate.
“The suffering in Gaza is manmade and must be stopped. Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale,” UNRWA said in a statement posted on X.
Amjad Shawa, head of the Palestinian NGO Network, told media on Monday that 900,000 children are experiencing varying degrees of malnutrition in Gaza.
Twenty-five countries, including the United Kingdom, France and other European nations, issued a joint statement saying the war in Gaza “must end now” and Israel must comply with international law.
The foreign ministers of the 25 countries, including Australia, Canada and Japan, said “the suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths”, and they condemned “the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food”.
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