Israeli operations intensified in southern Gaza with the military ordering evacuations and Hamas reporting the death of a senior figure in an airstrike.
The militant group said Salah al-Bardawil, a member of the group’s political bureau, was killed along with his wife in an Israeli strike on their tent in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
The Israeli military resumed air and ground operations in Gaza earlier this week, blaming Hamas for refusing to agree revised terms on extending the first phase of the ceasefire.
Israel blocked aid going into Gaza ahead of its renewed operations, in an attempt to force Hamas to accept the new terms and release the hostages it is still holding.
Early on Sunday the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a warning to people to leave the Tel Sultan area of Rafah in southern Gaza immediately as its troops launched an offensive in the area.
The IDF said it had “launched an attack to strike at terrorist organizations… The area you are in is considered a dangerous combat zone,” the post said, instructing civilians to move north to the Mawasi area immediately.
In a later statement, the Israeli military said “Over the past hours, IDF troops operated and concluded the encirclement of Tel al-Sultan in Rafah.”
The military said it had been dismantling “terrorist infrastructure sites … in order to reinforce control and expand the security zone in southern Gaza.”
Gaza’s Civil Defense warned Sunday of a “grave and imminent danger threatening the lives of more than 50,000 civilians” in the Al-Baraksat area, west of Rafah province, after they were “besieged by Israeli occupation forces.”
The IDF said movement in vehicles was not permitted, forcing those evacuating to do so by foot.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said four of its ambulances had been surrounded after responding to an Israeli attack in Rafah. Contact had been lost with a civil defense crew west of Rafah that was trying to rescue an ambulance crew.
Also in the south, Hamas-affiliated media reported that three people had been killed when a municipal vehicle in Khan Younis was struck.
The IDF is continuing its ground operations in northern Gaza. It said on Saturday that troops had begun operating in the Beit Hanoun area “to target Hamas’ terror infrastructure sites in order to expand the security zone in northern Gaza.”
It added that fighter jets struck several Hamas targets.
On Sunday, the Health Ministry in Gaza said that 41 more deaths in the past 24 hours as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 50,000, marking a grim milestone for a war with no end in sight.
The ministry said that 50,021 people have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 attacks in its latest update.
