'No safe areas,' says Hamas as Israeli forces move south in Gaza

Hamas said there are 'no safe areas' in Gaza after the Israeli military expanded its ground operation into 'all areas' of the region following the resumption of fighting on Friday.

Israel confirmed its forces were confronting Hamas fighters across the Gaza Strip, indicating its planned ground offensive in the enclave's refugee-crowded south had begun as Israeli bombing killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians. 

The renewed warfare followed the end of a seven-day pause in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants which had allowed an exchange of 105 hostages held by Hamas, most of them Israelis, for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

The latest violence took place despite calls from the U.S. for Israel to limit harm to Palestinian civilians in the new phase of its offensive.

Gaza residents said on Sunday they feared an Israeli ground offensive on the southern areas was imminent. Tanks had cut off the road between Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, effectively dividing the Gaza Strip into three. On Monday, Israel's military posted a statement on X with new orders for Gazans to evacuate about 20 areas or blocks in the Gaza Strip, with three arrows on the map all pointing south indicating where people should go.

Israel says it is defining 'safe areas' for Gazan civilians to minimize harm to them, but UN officials and people in Gaza say it is difficult to heed these orders in real-time given patchy internet access and unreliable electricity. Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan said on Sunday: "There are no safe areas."

Bombardments from war planes and artillery were also concentrated on Khan Younis and Rafah, another city in Gaza's south, residents said, and hospitals were struggling to cope with the flow of wounded.

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Israel government spokesperson Eylon Levy said the military had struck more than 400 targets over the weekend 'including extensive aerial attacks in the Khan Younis area' and had also killed Hamas militants and destroyed their infrastructure in Beit Lahiya in the north. 

On Sunday, Hamas said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops about 2 km from the southern city of Khan Younis. "The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) continues to extend its ground operation against Hamas centers in all of the Gaza Strip," Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said. "The forces are coming face-to-face with terrorists and killing them."

Israel said on Monday its military death toll from ground operations in Gaza had risen to 76. Early on Monday, Hamas media quoted emergency services as saying an Israeli strike killed three civil emergency workers in Gaza City in the north of the coastal enclave.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, told CGTN Europe that Gazans are in danger of simply having nowhere to go as Israeli troops head south. "There is already a displacement crisis in Gaza with the people that had to move from the most affected areas towards the south," he said.

"This has to stop because Gaza is a small place, very constrained, safety is difficult to reach. So the toll and the tragedy will just increase if that pause doesn't resume as a preamble, hopefully to meaningful peace talks."

The Jabalia refugee camp in the north of Hamas-ruled Gaza was among the sites reported hit from the air on Sunday. A Gazan health ministry spokesperson said several people were killed by an Israeli air strike.

Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in a car and detained two others during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be tried as a war criminal over Israel's ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip. Erdogan added that Gaza is Palestinian land and would always belong to Palestinians.

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