UNDEFINED – Israeli troops battled Hamas militants on Thursday in the heart of the southern Gaza Strip’s capital, where a senior militant leader is believed to be hiding as he pushes his offensive in the besieged area.

According to witnesses, Israeli troops, tanks, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers broke through Hamas’ defenses in Gaza’s second city and rolled into Khan Yunis, once again forcing displaced civilians to flee.

Hamas said on Telegram late Wednesday that its fighters were engaged in fierce battles against Israeli troops “on all axes of the Gaza Strip invasion,” claiming they had destroyed two dozen military vehicles in Khan Yunis and Beit Lahia in the territory’s north.

Earlier, the Israeli army said it had broken through defense lines and carried out “targeted raids in the heart of the city,” during which it found and destroyed 30 tunnel shafts.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement that Israeli forces were approaching the home of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip. A spokesman said it was “underground” in the Khan Yunis area.

But humanitarian organizations warn that the expansion of the war into the south of the Gaza Strip will leave civilians who have fled the north, much of it destroyed, with nowhere to go.

“We are devastated and mentally overwhelmed,” said Amal Mahdi, a resident of Khan Yunis. “We need someone to find a solution for us so we can get out of this situation.”

Israel declared war on Hamas following the militant group’s Oct. 7 attacks, which Israeli authorities said killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 240 hostages.

The Hamas government’s latest tally says the war in Gaza has killed more than 16,000 people, most of them women and children.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and release 138 hostages still held after scores of hostages were released during a short-lived ceasefire that collapsed last week.

“DESPERATE CONDITIONS”

Much of the northern Gaza Strip has already been reduced to rubble by intense fighting and bombardment, displacing 1.9 million people, according to the UN.

Many civilians fled to Khan Yunis when Israel ordered them to evacuate the north of the territory early in the war.

They are now being pushed further south to Rafah on the border with Egypt.

“There was bombing, destruction, leaflet dropping, threats and telephone calls to evacuate and leave Khan Yunis,” said Khamis Al-Dalu, who told AFP he was driven first from Gaza City and then from Khan Yunis to Rafah.

“Where shall we go? Where on earth should we go? We left Khan Yunis and are now in tents in Rafah.”

And Israeli bombings followed them there.

An attack on a residential area in Rafah late Wednesday left 17 people dead and dozens injured, the Hamas health ministry said. An AFP journalist saw the wounded, including children, being taken to a local Kuwaiti hospital.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera television said one of its journalists had lost 22 members of his family in a strike in the northern Jabalia refugee camp.

The Israeli army said on Wednesday it had struck about 250 targets in Gaza in the past 24 hours and that troops had found a large weapons depot “in the middle of the civilian population” near a clinic and a school in the territory’s north.

“The depot contained hundreds of RPG missiles and launchers of various types, dozens of anti-tank missiles,” explosives and drones, it said in a statement.

AFP footage on Wednesday showed trails of smoke after rocket fire from Rafah into Israel.

“MINIMUM” FUEL INCREASE

Massive civilian casualties in the war have sparked global concern, compounded by severe shortages resulting from an Israeli siege that left limited supplies of food, water, fuel and medicine.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he expects “public order will soon collapse completely due to the desperate conditions in Gaza,” with “potentially irreversible consequences for Palestinians as a whole.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen lashed out at Guterres on Wednesday, saying his tenure was “a threat to world peace” after he invoked a rare UN procedure over the Gaza war.

“His request to activate Article 99 and call for a ceasefire in Gaza represents support for the terrorist organization Hamas,” Cohen wrote on X.

“We too want this war to end,” Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy told reporters, “but it can only end in a way that ensures that Hamas can never attack our people again.”

On Wednesday, Israel approved a “minimal” increase in fuel shipments to Gaza to prevent a “humanitarian collapse and outbreak of epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip,” according to Netanyahu’s office.

NEW SETTLEMENTS APPROVED

The war has raised fears of a wider regional conflict, with almost daily gun battles with the Iran-backed Hezbollah on Israel’s border with Lebanon and a wave of deadly violence in the occupied West Bank.

On Wednesday, Israel said a missile fired at the Red Sea city of Eilat was “successfully intercepted” after sirens blared in the resort town.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the Wafa news agency, Israeli troops raided two refugee camps in the occupied West Bank and killed three Palestinians, one of them 16 years old.

According to Palestinian authorities, more than 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire or settler attacks since the war began.

Israeli authorities have now approved the construction of more than 1,700 new homes, a non-governmental organization said on Wednesday, a move that represents an expansion of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.

Half of the “new district” with 1,738 residential units will be in the annexed east of the city, said the Israeli NGO Peace Now.

“If it weren’t for the war [between Israel and Hamas], there would be a lot of noise. “It is an extremely problematic project for the continued existence of a Palestinian state between the southern West Bank and East Jerusalem,” Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran told AFP.