Israeli soldiers operate at the Shajaiya district of Gaza city amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, Dec. 8, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Yossi Zeliger

Israeli tanks battled their way to the heart of Khan Younis on Sunday in a major new push into the main city of the southern Gaza Strip, as Israel continued its military campaign against the Hamas terror group.

Residents said tanks had reached the main north-south road through the middle of Khan Younis after intense combat through the night that had slowed the Israeli advance from the east. Warplanes were pounding the area west of the assault.

The air rumbled with the constant thud of explosions and thick columns of white smoke rose over the densely crowded city, filled with people displaced from elsewhere in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave.

As morning broke near a city-center police station, the constant rattle of machine-gun fire could be heard. Streets there were mostly deserted.

At the opposite end of the Gaza Strip, in northern areas where Israel had previously said its forces had largely completed their tasks, residents also described some of the most intense fighting of the war so far.

Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, after the terror group burst across the fence on Oct. 7 and went on a rampage through Israeli towns, gunning down families in their homes, killing 1,200 people and seizing 240 hostages.

Since then, Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza say thousands of people have been killed during Israel’s military campaign, although experts have cast doubt on the reliability of casualty figures coming out of Gaza.

Hamas leaders have repeatedly stated the terror group is committed to Israel’s destruction.

After weeks of fighting concentrated in the north, Israel launched its ground offensive in the south this week with a storm of Khan Younis.

The main hospital in Khan Younis, Nasser hospital, has been overrun with dead and wounded.

The Israeli military said it bombed underground tunnel shafts in Khan Younis and attacked a squad of Palestinian gunmen preparing an ambush, but said nothing about any tank advance.

Hamas said its fighters had damaged or destroyed 180 Israeli military vehicles during the fighting, without producing evidence, and said Israel would not be able to recover the remaining hostages by force, only through negotiations.

Fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon, triggered by the Gaza conflict, intensified on Sunday.

At an international conference in Doha, capital of Qatar which acted as the main mediator for a week-long truce that saw more than 100 hostages freed, Arab foreign ministers criticized the United States for vetoing a UN Security Council resolution on Friday that demanded a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the war risked radicalizing a generation across the Middle East. Jordan’s foreign minister said the Israeli campaign aimed to drive Palestinians from Gaza and met the legal definition of genocide, accusations Israel called outrageous.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he would “not give up” appealing for a ceasefire.

“I urged the Security Council to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and I reiterated my appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared,” Guterres said. “Regrettably, the Security Council failed to do it, but that does not make it less necessary.”

Israel has spurned demands it halt the fighting. Briefing his cabinet on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had told the leaders of France, Germany, and other countries: “You cannot on the one hand support the elimination of Hamas, and on other pressure us to end the war, which would prevent the elimination of Hamas.”