The Palestinian death toll in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza marked yet another grim milestone Sunday as the Gazan Health Ministry confirmed at least 35,034 people have now been killed in the territory.
The toll includes at least 63 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 78,755 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its war on Oct. 7 after a Hamas incursion.
However, the climbing death toll and international condemnation did little to deter Israeli aggression as it sent tanks into eastern Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip early Sunday.
The ground movement followed a night of heavy aerial bombardments and artillery fire, killing 19 people and wounding dozens of others, health officials said.
Jabalia is the biggest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps and is home to more than 100,000 people, most of whom were descendants of Palestinians who were driven from towns and villages in what is now Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to the creation the state of Israel.
Late on Saturday, the Israeli military claimed forces operating in Jabalia were preventing Hamas, which controls Gaza, from re-establishing its military capabilities there.
"We identified in the past weeks attempts by Hamas to rehabilitate its military capabilities in Jabalia. We are operating there to eliminate those attempts," said Israel's military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
Meanwhile, Saed, a 45-year-old Jabalia resident, said that the "Bombardment from air and ground hasn't stopped since yesterday, they were bombing everywhere, including near schools that are housing people who lost their houses."
"War is restarting, this is how it looks in Jabalia," he told Reuters via a chat app. "The new incursion forces many families to evacuate."
The army sent tanks back into Al-Zeitoun, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, as well as Al-Sabra, where residents also reported heavy bombardments that destroyed several houses, including high-rise residential buildings.
The army had claimed to have gained control of most of these areas months ago.
Gunbattles
Tanks did not invade eastern Deir al-Balah city, residents and Hamas media said, but some Israeli tanks and bulldozers penetrated the fence on the outskirts of the city prompting a gunfight with Hamas.
In an airstrike late on Saturday in Deir al-Balah two doctors, a father and his son, were killed, health officials said.
The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said their members attacked Israeli forces in several areas inside Gaza with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs, including in Rafah, previously the Palestinians' last refuge where more than a million people were sheltering.
The war was triggered by a Hamas-led incursion on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 people taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
On Sunday, more families, estimated in the thousands, were leaving Rafah as the Israeli military pressure intensified. Tank shells landed across the city as the army gave new evacuation orders covering some neighborhoods in the center of the city, which borders Egypt.
"As I moved out of Rafah, I passed through Khan Younis, I cried, I didn't know if was I crying for what I was passing through, the humiliation and the feeling of loss I felt or for what I have seen," said Tamer al-Burai, a resident from Gaza, who had been sheltering in Rafah.
"I saw a ghost city, all buildings on the two sides of the road, complete districts were wiped out. People are fleeing for safety, knowing there was no place safe and there are no tents and no people to care for them," he told Reuters.
Burai, a Palestinian businessman, said the Palestinians were abandoned by the world and left to face their destiny as the war entered its eighth month, with world powers failing to end hostilities and international mediation efforts to reach a cease-fire collapsing.
"No cease-fire, no U.N. decision, no hope," he said.