Over 200 martyred as deadly fighting grinds on in Gaza's Khan Yunis

GAZA, Palestine (AFP) - Israel pressed its blistering assault on the Gazan city of Khan Yunis Thursday, with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas saying dozens were killed in heavy bombardment and urban combat.

The Israeli army says it has "encircled" Khan Yunis, the hometown of Hamas's Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, accused of being the mastermind of the October 7 attacks that sparked the war. An AFP journalist said the bombardment of Khan Yunis was relentless, with strikes hitting every few minutes. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, reported fierce clashes in the centre and west of the city, where fighting has been inching closer to hospitals sheltering thousands of displaced people.

Its health ministry said over 200 people were martyred in Khan Yunis over the past 24 hours. The army said several militants were killed in "close-quarters combat" in the city, and that strikes also targeted militants in central and northern Gaza. At Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, AFPTV footage showed graves with the names of those buried scrawled on them in crayon amid debris-strewn streets and pockmarked buildings.

"Those look like graves, but they are not proper ones," said Ahmad Abdul Salam, a resident of the city's Al-Maghazi refugee camp. "We buried whole families, who were wiped out, inside these mass graves."

'Terrified' hospital staff

Another 12 people were killed on Wednesday when two tank shells struck a UN building sheltering 800 people in Khan Yunis, the United Nations said, updating its previous toll of nine dead. Thomas White, the Gaza director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), denounced "persistent attacks on civilian sites" in Khan Yunis as "utterly unacceptable".

Intense fighting near hospitals in Khan Yunis had "effectively encircled these facilities, leaving terrified staff, patients and displaced people trapped inside", he said in a statement. Asked about the shelling, the Israeli army said "a thorough review of the operations of the forces in the vicinity is underway", adding it was examining the possibility that the strike was a "result of Hamas fire". The Israeli military is the only force known to have tanks operating in the Gaza Strip.

The United States also condemned the bombardment, with State Department spokesman Vedant Patel saying "civilians must be protected and the protected nature of UN facilities must be respected".