Israel is closing in on “full control” of northern Gaza, former army chief Amir Avivi has said.

“We are now at a critical moment,” he says. “More and more terrorists are surrendering,” Avivi told the BBC.

“Within a week or two, the IDF will have full control of the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

“It is a very dense area, a stronghold of Hamas, but geographically this is only 20% of the Gaza Strip.

“But it’s a significant achievement,” he added.

Elsewhere in Gaza, Avivi describes “fierce fighting” around Khan Younis in the south and insists that Israel is “liberating Gaza from Hamas”.

At the same time, today Hamas condemned that it will not release the hostages it holds “alive” without “negotiations”.

On the night of Sunday to Monday, an AFP journalist reported that there were heavy airstrikes in Khan Younis, a new focus of the war, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another armed group operating mainly in Gaza, reported heavy fighting in the Gaza City sector, claiming it blew up a house in which Israeli soldiers were searching for an underground tunnel.

The Israeli military spoke today of rocket fire from Gaza and yesterday of “fierce” fighting in areas of Gaza City and Khan Younis, where Palestinian fighters are “emerging from underground tunnels”, detonating “explosives” and firing “anti-tank rockets”. .

“I don’t want to say that we are using all our power, but we are using a lot of power and we are securing significant results,” Israeli Chief of Staff General Herchi Halevi said yesterday on Sunday.