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The Israeli military has launched a ground operation on Monday in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, sending in tanks a day after dropping leaflets on neighbourhoods advising people to evacuate.
The ground operation, the first to take place in the city since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza erupted in 2023, is being accompanied by aerial strikes by Israel’s air force.
Eyewitnesses said massive air strikes took place on the city overnight into Monday, one of the last remaining areas of the Strip not to suffer significant damage from the war.
The city is hosting thousands of Palestinians displaced from southern Gaza and is also the main hub for erratic aid deliveries due to its central location.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cautioned against a military operation in Deir al-Balah after the IDF dropped evacuation orders on the city on Sunday.
“OCHA warns that today’s mass displacement order issued by the Israeli military has dealt yet another devastating blow to the already fragile lifelines keeping people alive across the Gaza Strip,” the agency said in a statement.
“With this latest order, the area of Gaza under displacement orders or within Israeli-militarised zones has risen to 87.8%, leaving 2.1 million civilians squeezed into a fragmented 12% of the Strip, where essential services have collapsed.”
The Israel Defence Forces haven’t yet released a statement about the aims of the latest operation, but Israeli sources have said one of the reasons the IDF has so far stayed away from Deir al-Balah is that they suspect Hamas might be holding hostages there.
The militant group is still holding 50 people captive in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to still be alive.
The new military operation comes after Gaza suffered its deadliest day for aid-seekers in more than 21 months of war on Sunday, with at least 85 Palestinians killed while trying to access food, according to local and UN officials.
The highest death toll was reported in northern Gaza, where the situation is especially desperate, when at least 70 Palestinians were killed while trying to reach aid entering through the Zikim crossing with Israel, according to health officials.
The UN World Food Programme said 25 trucks with aid had entered for “starving communities” when it encountered massive crowds.
The Israeli military said soldiers fired warning shots at a gathering of thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza who posed a threat, and it was aware of some casualties. It also rejected casualty reports as “exaggerated”.
