Israeli tanks briefly reached the outskirts of Gaza City as the army intensified its ground and air attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Palestinian sources told Al Jazeera on Monday that Israeli tanks made an incursion towards Salah al-Din Street in the middle of Gaza City governorate, about 3 km from the Gaza fence. Violent clashes were reported in the area.
Tanks entered the Zaytun district, south of the Palestinian territory’s main city, cutting off a key road running from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip for more than an hour, telephone witnesses told AFP to journalists from southern Gaza.
“They have cut off the Salah al-Din road and are shooting at any vehicle that tries to use it,” said a resident.
A few kilometers away, Al Jazeera’s Safwat Kahlout said he could see “plumes of smoke” rising above the area where the tanks were located.
Israeli planes bombed a section of the road, leaving large craters, a resident told AFP. Video footage verified by Al Jazeera showed a tank blowing up a car on the road. Palestinian medical sources report that three people were killed in the attack.
Later Monday, Salama Maarouf, head of the Hamas government office in Gaza, said Israeli tanks had withdrawn from the outskirts of Gaza City.
“There is absolutely no ground progress in the residential areas of the Gaza Strip. What happened in Salah al-Din Street was the incursion of some tanks of the occupying army and a bulldozer,” Maarouf said in a statement.
“These vehicles targeted two civilian cars on Salah al-Din Street and bulldozed the street before resistance forced them to retreat. There is currently no presence of occupying army vehicles on the Salah al-Din road and the movement of citizens has returned to normal on the road,” he said.
The tanks remained for a little more than an hour and the cars quickly returned to the highway, driving to the shoulder in areas where craters made the road unusable, according to reports.
More than 8,000 dead
Since Friday, Israeli forces have intensified their ground offensive as part of the military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that Israeli officials say killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and captured another 239 people.
Gaza’s health ministry says more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians and more than half of them children, have since been killed in Israeli air and ground attacks.
Also on Monday, the Israeli army said it had struck more than 600 targets in 24 hours, up from 450 the day before, in one of the most intense days of the conflict.
Israel has repeatedly warned the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, to head south to avoid its military strikes as it continues its mission to “destroy” the Hamas, the group that rules the besieged Palestinian enclave. However, shelling continues and residents say there is no safe route to evacuate.
Although large numbers of people have left the area in recent weeks, tens of thousands more are estimated to remain in the area.
The Israeli military said its troops killed “dozens” of Hamas fighters in nighttime clashes, saying they had “barricaded themselves inside buildings and tunnels and attempted to attack the troops.”
In one incident, a fighter jet targeted a building that the Israeli military said had “more than 20 Hamas terrorists inside,” while another fighter jet was guided toward a post launch of anti-tank missiles in the area of al-Azhar University. The university is in the heart of Gaza City.
The Israeli military also said it hit “weapons depots, dozens of anti-tank missile launch positions, as well as hideouts and staging areas used by the Hamas terrorist organization.”
