The Israeli military says its ground forces have “encircled” the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip after two dozen of its soldiers were killed in its largest single-day toll in the three-month of aggression on the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Over the past day, troops carried out an extensive operation during which they encircled Khan Younis and deepened the operation in the area,” the Israeli military said of the attacks on Gaza’s second-largest city on Tuesday.
Media reports said Israeli tanks shut the road out towards the coast, blocking the escape route for civilians trying to reach Rafah, the last town on Gaza’s southern edge – now crammed with more than half the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
The invading Israeli troops have blockaded hospitals, which Palestinian officials say makes it impossible to rescue the dead and wounded.
Khan Younis, the largest city in the south of the Strip, has been the focus of the regime’s latest strikes.
Some 190 people have been killed over the past 24 hours, almost a third of them in Khan Yunis.
Israeli forces have encircled the city and launched an airstrike on areas around Nasser Hospital. At Khan Younis’s main hospital, the biggest still functioning in the Gaza Strip, bodies were being buried on the grounds because it was unsafe to go out to the cemetery.
At the European Hospital, reached by media outlets in southern Khan Younis, Ahed Masmah brought in five corpses, piled on a mattress on his donkey cart. “I found them face-down in the street,” he said. “I did a good thing and brought them in.”
Footage filmed by Palestinian journalist Hamdan El-Dahdouh showed persistent gunfire hitting the top of the main building.
“I am besieged at Nasser Hospital now and my life is in great danger. The smell of death, the only smell I know, is filling the place,” Dr Mahmoud Abu Shammala posted on Facebook.
Meanwhile, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees says telecommunications and internet services in Gaza have been down for the past seven days, the longest since October 7. It added that the blackout prevents people from accessing life-saving information, and impedes humanitarian response.
On the 109th day of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, the death toll has risen to more than 25,500, predominantly comprising women and children.
Despite its deadly and destructive campaign in Gaza, Israel has so far failed to achieve its main goals in the onslaught, namely destroying Hamas and securing the release of its captives through military means.
Separately, US news website Axios has reported that Israel has forwarded the proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
The proposal doesn’t include an agreement to end the war but points to a multi-phase deal on releasing the captives.
Unnamed Israeli officials have been cited as saying that an undetermined number of Palestinian detainees would also be freed. An Israeli media outlet has also confirmed the proposal.
It comes amid growing pressure and criticism Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been facing at home over his failure to bring the captives back home.
Some 250 captives were taken by Hamas following the al-Aqsa Storm operation on October 7th. Hamas exchanged 80 of them for 240 Palestinian prisoners during a pause in the war last month.
Palestinians say many of some 130 captives still held in Gaza have been killed in Israeli strikes.
