CNN
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Israeli operations intensified in southern Gaza with the military encircling an entire district and ordering evacuations as the country pressed a renewed offensive in the territory.
The latest campaign comes after the Israeli military resumed air and ground operations in Gaza earlier this week, blaming Hamas for refusing to agree revised terms on extending the first phase of the ceasefire. Gaza health officials meanwhile said the toll from the fighting since October 7 has passed 50,000.
The Israeli military said Sunday that troops had concluded the encirclement of Tel al-Sultan, a district to the west of Rafah that has seen multiple Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operations in the past year, a testament to the difficulties of dislodging Hamas.
The purpose of the operation was to “reinforce control and expand the security zone in southern Gaza,” the IDF said in a statement Sunday.
“During the night, the troops encircled the area, eliminated several terrorists, and conducted a targeted raid on a terror infrastructure site that was used over the past few months as a command and control center of Hamas terrorists,” the IDF said.
The military earlier issued a warning to people to leave the Tel al-Sultan area immediately as troops launched their offensive.
The IDF instructed civilians to move north to the Mawasi area, but would not permit movement in vehicles, forcing those evacuating to do so by foot.
The Israeli military forcibly displaced thousands of already displaced people from their tents in the Tel al-Sultan district under heavy gunfire, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank said in a post on social media.
Gaza’s Civil Defense warned of a “grave and imminent danger threatening the lives of more than 50,000 civilians” in the Al-Baraksat area, west of Rafah, after they were “besieged by Israeli occupation forces.”
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said four of its ambulances had been surrounded after responding to an Israeli attack in Rafah. Contact had been lost with a civil defense crew west of Rafah that was trying to rescue an ambulance crew.
Also in the south, Hamas-affiliated media reported that three people had been killed when a municipal vehicle in Khan Younis was struck.
Hamas said Salah al-Bardawil, a member of the group’s political bureau, was killed along with his wife in an Israeli strike on tents for the displaced in the area.
Israel blocked aid going into Gaza ahead of its renewed operations, in an attempt to force Hamas to accept the new terms and release the hostages it is still holding.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said no food, water, medicines or fuel have entered Gaza in three weeks, marking a longer siege than what was in place in the first phase of the war. “Every day without food inches Gaza closer to an acute hunger crisis,” UNRWA said in a social media post on Sunday.
The IDF is also continuing its ground operations in northern Gaza. It said on Saturday that troops had begun operating in the Beit Hanoun area “to target Hamas’ terror infrastructure sites in order to expand the security zone in northern Gaza.”
It added that fighter jets struck several Hamas targets.
On Sunday, the Health Ministry in Gaza said that 41 more deaths in the past 24 hours as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 50,000, marking a grim milestone for a war with no end in sight.
The ministry said that 50,021 people have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 attacks in its latest update.
