Israeli forces advancing on the western town of Khan Younis in the bloodiest fighting in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year stormed one hospital and besieged another on Monday, preventing the wounded from receiving medical care, officials said. Reuters.

Israeli troops first arrived in the Al-Mawasi district, near the Mediterranean coast, west of Khan Yunis, the main city in the southern Gaza Strip, writes News.ro. There, soldiers stormed al-Khair hospital and arrested medical staff, Ashraf al-Kidra, a spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, told Reuters.

Israel did not comment on the situation at the hospital. The army spokesman’s office had no comment, Reuters reported.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said tanks also surrounded another hospital in Khan Younis, al-Amal, the headquarters of the rescue service, which had lost contact with its staff.

Ashraf al-Kidra said at least 50 people were killed overnight in Khan Younis, and the siege of medical facilities left dozens dead and wounded beyond the reach of rescuers.

“The Israeli occupation prevents ambulances from moving to pick up the bodies of the martyrs and the wounded in western Khan Younis,” he said.

Israel claims that Hamas fighters are operating in and around hospitals, which Hamas and medical personnel deny.

“Hamas is coordinating its operations inside and under hospitals and other medical facilities,” said Elad Goren of COGAT, the division of the Israeli Defense Ministry that coordinates with the Palestinians. “A special effort, led by the task force, was made to ensure that civilians had access to medical care,” Goren said.

Residents said the bombardment from the air, land and sea was the heaviest in southern Gaza since the war began in October, when Israeli tanks crossed Khan Younis towards the Mediterranean coast.

Remote video showed civilians wandering through a ghost town strewn with tents with abandoned laundry hanging on ropes as gunfire rang out and plumes of smoke rose into the sky.

Israel launched an offensive last week to capture Khan Younis, which it now says is the main headquarters of Hamas militants responsible for the October 7 attacks in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures.

The new phase of the war has brought fighting deep into Palestinian territory, to the last corners of the enclave, now filled with those who fled the bombings. At least 25,295 Gazans have been killed since October 7, Gaza health authorities said in an updated report on Monday.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now displaced in Rafah, south of Khan Younis, and Deir al-Balah, north of it, sheltering in public buildings and huge makeshift tent cities made of plastic sheets attached to wooden stilts. frames

Nasser Hospital, a picture of hell

At Nasser Hospital, the only major hospital still available in Khan Younis and the largest hospital still operating in Gaza, footage showed a trauma ward overflowing with wounded being treated on a blood-spattered floor. Relatives cried, surrounding the injured small children, several of whom were lying in one bed.

A young man, Rabi Salem, was sitting on the floor holding a wounded girl in his arms. They finally arrived at the hospital in the morning after waiting all night for an ambulance while his mother lay dying. She told him not to worry about her and to help the rest of the family, he said, crying: “She’s gone now.”

Ahmed Abu Mustafa, an emergency room doctor, said he had been awake for 30 hours treating 10 to 11 patients in the four-bed intensive care unit.

Outside, men were digging graves on the grounds of the hospital, as it was already dangerous to enter the cemetery. The man placed the child’s tiny body, wrapped in a white shroud, in a shallow hole dug in the sand. Authorities said 40 people were buried there.

“It is very difficult to leave the area and go to any cemetery to bury them because we are under siege and anyone who leaves the area is a target,” the official said.

The assault on the western parts of Khan Yunis is the culmination of a battle that Israeli officials have described as the last large-scale ground attack before moving on to more targeted operations to root out Hamas.

Israel says it will not stop fighting until Hamas is destroyed. But Palestinians and some Western military experts say that goal may be impossible to achieve, given the group’s scattered structure and deep roots in Gaza, which it has ruled since 2007.

Although they mostly support the war, a growing number of Israelis, led by relatives of hostages left in Gaza, say the government must do more to reach a deal for their release, even if that means scaling back its offensive.

About 20 relatives of the hostages stormed into a parliamentary committee meeting in Jerusalem on Monday, demanding lawmakers do more to try to free their loved ones.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of relatives of the hostages that the information about the new agreement on the release of the hostages is not true. “There is no real proposal from Hamas. Falsehood. I am saying this as clearly as possible because there are so many false claims that are undoubtedly troubling you,” Netanyahu told a group of relatives.

Sami al-Zuhri, the head of Hamas’ political wing in exile, told Reuters on Monday that Hamas was open to “all initiatives and proposals, but any deal must be based on the cessation of aggression and the complete withdrawal of the occupation” from Gaza.