JERUSALEM — Fighting in South Gaza intensified Wednesday as Israeli troops entered Khan Younis, once a haven for Palestinians fleeing the hostilities, driving thousands more displaced civilians to makeshift tent cities in areas farther south that are jammed with refugees.
The Israeli army said its tanks had reached the center of Khan Younis, the largest city in the south and reportedly the stronghold of Yehiya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Commanders said they were engaged in some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
Khan Younis has been crowded with civilians displaced by earlier fighting in northern Gaza. On Wednesday, Israel warned thousands of residents and refugees to evacuate, setting many on the move for the second or third time in two months of war.
Dozens were killed Tuesday in an Israeli strike on a school in Khan Younis, witnesses told The Washington Post. Gaza health ministry officials said they were still counting casualties from airstrikes there and elsewhere; many of the dead, they said, remained buried under rubble.
The current hostilities began when Hamas and allied fighters streamed out of Gaza on Oct. 7 to rampage through Israeli communities, killing at least 1,200 people and taking about 240 back to the enclave as hostages. Captives who have been released have related harrowing details of their time in Hamas hands, including beatings and sexual abuse of male and female captives.
Israel responded to the surprise attack with a campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza. At least 15,899 Gazans have been killed since, health ministry officials there say.
International outrage over the climbing civilian death toll is mounting. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called on the U.N. Security Council to press for a humanitarian cease-fire to restore “the means of survival” to Gaza’s civilian population.
“The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region,” he wrote to the council’s president.
Israeli officials have given no sign of letting up.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Guterres’s call for a cease-fire “constitutes support of the Hamas terrorist organization and an endorsement of the murder of the elderly, the abduction of babies and the rape of women.
“Anyone who supports world peace must support the liberation of Gaza from Hamas,” he posted on X.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel would deploy “crushing force” to eliminate Hamas.
“We are on the right path,” he told reporters. Netanyahu also indicated that Israel was prepared to keep troops inside Gaza indefinitely, in defiance of U.S. and international expectations that the enclave will be returned to Palestinian control after the war and suggestions that international peacekeepers could step in.
“No international force can be responsible for this,” Netanyahu said. “I’m not ready to close my eyes and accept any other arrangement.”
The prime minister’s office announced Wednesday that Israel would allow a “minimal supplement” of fuel to enter southern Gaza. Aid groups have stressed that more fuel is needed to power the enclave’s hospitals, desalination plants and ovens.
