Seemingly emboldened by U.S. support at the Security Council, Israel launched Sunday a major new push into the main city in the southern Gaza Strip as tanks battled their way to the center of Khan Younis.
Residents said tanks had reached the main north-south road through the middle of Khan Younis after intense combat through the night that had slowed the Israeli advance from the east. Warplanes were pounding the area west of the assault.
The air rumbled with the constant thud of explosions and thick columns of white smoke rose over the city, which is sheltering hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled other parts of the enclave. As morning broke near a city-center police station, the constant rattle of machinegun fire could be heard. Streets there were deserted apart from an old woman and a girl riding on a donkey cart.
"It was one of the most dreadful nights, the resistance was very strong, we could hear gunshots and explosions that didn't stop for hours," a father of four displaced from Gaza City and sheltering in Khan Younis told Reuters. He declined to be identified for fear of reprisals.
"In Khan Younis tanks reached Jamal Abdel-Nasser Street, which is at the center of the city. Snipers took positions on buildings in the area," he said.
Israel launched the storm of Khan Younis this week after a truce collapsed, extending its ground war to Gaza's southern half in a new, expanded phase of its two-month-old campaign to wipe out Hamas. International aid organisations say this has left the enclave's 2.3 million people with nowhere to hide.
At the site of one Khan Younis home that had been destroyed by bombing overnight, relatives of the dead were combing the rubble in a daze. They dragged the body of a middle-aged man in a yellow T-shirt from under the masonry.
"We prayed the nighttime prayer and went to sleep, then woke up to find the house on top of us. 'Who's alive?!'" said Ahmed Abdel Wahab.
"The civil defense forces came and rescued who they could, and this is what's left. Three floors above collapsed down and the people are under it. God is our saviour and the disposer of our affairs. My mother and father, my sister and brother, all of my cousins."
Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad, allied to Hamas, said its fighters were battling Israeli forces in the area. The Israeli military said it bombed underground tunnel shafts in Khan Younis and attacked a squad of Palestinian gunmen preparing an ambush, but said nothing about any tank advance there.
Both sides also reported heavy fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip, where Israel had previously said its troops had mainly succeeded in their mission last month. Explosions rang out at dawn there and columns of smoke could be seen from across the fence in Israel.
The vast majority of Gaza's residents have now been forced from their homes, many fleeing several times with only the belongings they can carry. Israel says it is doing what it can to protect them, but even its closest ally the United States says it has fallen short of those promises. An Israeli siege has cut off supplies, with the United Nations warning of mass hunger and disease.
At an international conference in Doha, capital of Qatar which acted as the main mediator for a weeklong truce that saw more than 100 hostages freed, Arab foreign ministers criticized the United States for vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution on Friday that demanded a humanitarian cease-fire.
Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the war risked radicalizing an entire generation across the Middle East.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he would "not give up" appealing for a cease-fire.
"I urged the Security Council to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and I reiterated my appeal for a humanitarian cease-fire to be declared," Guterres said. "Regrettably, the Security Council failed to do it, but that does not make it less necessary."
Israel has spurned demands it halt the fighting. Briefing his cabinet on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had told the leaders of France, Germany and other countries: "You cannot on the one hand support the elimination of Hamas, and on other pressure us to end the war, which would prevent the elimination of Hamas."
Washington has backed Israel's position, rejecting any cease-fire as a step that would only benefit Hamas. But with the death toll soaring and U.N. agencies warning of humanitarian catastrophe, other Western allies have balked: France voted in favor of the U.N. cease-fire resolution and Britain abstained.
