Fighting in southern Gaza and its main city, Khan Younis, is intensifying

Fighting intensified in southern Gaza on Monday, with medical personnel reporting heavy gunfire and a surge of Israeli tanks and troops in areas around hospitals.

The Palestinian Red Crescent and Gaza's health ministry said many people were killed and injured in the town of Khan Younis on Monday, without giving specific figures. Nahed Abu Taaema, the director of surgery at Nasser Hospital, the largest hospital in southern Gaza, told Al Jazeera in a television interview that it had received 100 wounded and 50 bodies.

Naseem Hasan, an ambulance officer with Nasser, said in an interview that tanks were about 100 meters south of the hospital and “could attack anyone.” He said an ambulance carrying a person who had been shot in the head could not reach Nasser this morning and had to go to a hospital in Rafah – a journey that took three hours.

In a statement, the Red Crescent said the presence of Israeli forces near Al-Amal Hospital, which it operates, meant ambulances could not reach the wounded in Khan Younis. It said anyone trying to move through the area came under fire.

“Khan Younis is very dangerous now,” Nebal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the Red Crescent, said in an interview. “The entire Khan Younis district is actually under siege.”

While Israel has halted operations in northern Gaza, it has continued its invasion of Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought shelter in schools, hospitals and tent cities.

Israeli officials have said the campaign in the city – which they describe as a Hamas stronghold – targeted the group's leadership, and they have accused Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian infrastructure to conceal its operations. But civilians, many of whom have moved several times since the war began, are left without a place to stay.

Wafa, the Palestinian Authority's official news agency, reported on Monday that several people had been killed and injured in a school in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis, after an Israeli attack. The report could not be independently verified. The school housed displaced people who went there after the Israeli army told them that Al-Mawasi was a safe zone.

Ms Farsakh said Red Crescent crews had received calls from people injured in Khan Younis, including at the school in Al-Mawasi, and that crews could not respond “because they are being targeted”.

The Israeli army said on Monday that its soldiers launched a new operation in western Khan Younis on Sunday evening that would target Hamas infrastructure in the coming days, including a security headquarters and command centers.

Army officials noted in a statement that sensitive sites in the area include several hospitals, but that Hamas is “exploiting the civilian population” and has used medical facilities in their operations, including an attack launched from Nasser Hospital last week. The statement said that areas occupied by civilians had been marked and that the soldiers involved would use their experience to “limit damage to uninvolved individuals.”

A day after Gaza's health ministry said the death toll in the fighting had reached 25,000, officials said Israeli attacks in the enclave had killed 190 people and injured 340 others in the past 24 hours. It was not specified how many casualties there were in Khan Younis.

A few hours later, the Israeli army said it had lost 200 soldiers since it began its ground operations in Gaza on October 27, as part of its broader response to the October 7 attack, which Israeli officials said killed about 1,200 people .

Ameera Harouda contributed to reporting from Doha, Qatar, Abu Bakr Bashir from London, and Johnatan Reiss in Tel Aviv.