Israel intensifies bombardment in southern Gaza, including areas it had deemed safe

Warning: This story contains distressing images and details.

Intense Israeli airstrikes hit the south of the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, including in areas where Israel had told people to seek shelter, residents and journalists on the ground said.

Israeli troops and tanks also pressed the ground campaign against Hamas militants in the south of the enclave after having largely gained control of the now-devastated north.

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Early on Monday, Israel ordered Palestinians to leave parts of Gaza's main southern city, Khan Younis. But residents said areas where they'd been told to go were also coming under fire.

Israel's military posted a map on X on Monday morning with around a quarter of the city of Khan Younis marked off in yellow as territory that must be evacuated at once.

Three arrows pointed south and west, telling people to head toward the Mediterranean Sea and the Egyptian border.

Desperate Gazans in Khan Younis packed their belongings and headed towards Rafah. Most were on foot, walking past ruined buildings in a solemn and silent procession.

But the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza (UNWRA), Thomas White, said people in Rafah were themselves being forced to flee.

"People are pleading for advice on where to find safety. We have nothing to tell them," he said on X.

In the territory's northern part, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said at least 50 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit two schools sheltering displaced people in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza could not be reached for comment on the report and it was not immediately possible to verify it independently. A spokesperson for the Israeli army said it was looking into the report.

Separately, the Health Ministry said at least 15,899 Palestinians, 70 per cent of them women or minors, have now been killed in Israeli bombardments of the Hamas-ruled enclave during eight weeks of warfare. Thousands more are missing and feared buried in rubble.

Israel launched its assault to wipe out Hamas in retaliation for an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by its gunmen. They killed 1,200 people, including several Canadians, and seized 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies — the deadliest single day in Israel's 75-year history.

'There is no safe area in all of the Gaza'

Overnight bombing at one site in Rafah had torn a crater the size of a basketball court out of the ground. A dead toddler's bare feet and black trousers poked out from under a pile of rubble. Men struggled with their bare hands to move a chunk of the concrete that had crushed the child.

Later they chanted "God is greatest" and wept as they marched through the ruins carrying the body in a bundle, and that of another small child wrapped in a blanket.

"We were asleep and safe," said Salah al-Arja, owner of one of the houses destroyed at the site. "There were children, women and martyrs," he said. "They tell you it is a safe area, but there is no safe area in all of the Gaza Strip."

Israel accuses Hamas of putting civilians in danger by operating from civilian areas, including in tunnels which can only be destroyed by large bombs. Hamas denies it does so.

As many as 80 per cent of Gaza's 2.3 million people have fled their homes in an Israeli bombing campaign that has reduced much of the crowded coastal strip to a desolate wasteland.

Israeli forces largely captured the northern half of Gaza in November. Since the truce collapsed Friday, they have swiftly pushed deep into the southern half.

Tanks have driven into Gaza from the border fence and cut off the main north-south route, residents say. The Israeli military said the central road out of Khan Younis to the north "constitutes a battlefield" and was now shut.

Hamas said its fighters clashed with Israeli forces in northern Khan Younis overnight.

The United Nations humanitarian office said the southern areas ordered evacuated since the truce were home to more than 350,000 people before the war, not counting the hundreds of thousands now sheltering there from other areas.

Israel permitted additional humanitarian supplies to enter the enclave during the truce, but the United Nations says this was paltry compared to the territory's vast humanitarian need — and now it has been interrupted by the renewed fighting.

"I reiterate my call for a sustained humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, the unconditional and immediate release of all hostages, and unimpeded and sustained humanitarian aid flow to meet the needs of the people throughout the Gaza Strip," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Monday on social media.

U.S. calls for protection of civilians

Israel's closest ally, the United States, has publicly called on Israel to do more to safeguard civilians in the southern part of the Gaza Strip than in last month's campaign in the north, especially as there are so many people already homeless there.

On Monday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. expects Israel to avoid attacking areas that Israeli authorities have identified as "no-strike" zones in Gaza.

"They have also indicated that there are areas where there will be 'no-strike' zones. And in those zones, we do expect Israel to follow through on not striking," Sullivan told reporters at the White House.

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a speech in California on Saturday that the Israeli military offensive must minimize civilian casualties.

"The centre of gravity is the civilian population and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat," Austin said.