Nine Palestinians were killed and 75 others injured in an attack by the Israeli army on an Israeli military training center in Khan Younis, which is home to thousands of displaced people. Two tanks opened fire on the training center, the director of the UN office for Palestine refugees in Gaza (UNRWA) Thomas White said in a post on the X platform.

The shells hit a building where about 800 people had taken refuge, he added. Earlier, Thomas White spoke of “heavy losses” from the Israeli strike.

The Israeli army has cut off access to southern Gaza’s main hospitals during its assault on Khan Younis and closed the main escape route for the hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people who had taken refuge there, according to Palestinian officials.

Responding to questions about the fire at the UNRWA center, the Israeli military said the wider area is an important base for Hamas militants. “Dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities in western Khan Younis is the heart and purpose of this operation,” he added.

Multiple sources told Reuters earlier that Israel and Hamas had made “some progress” in their indirect negotiations on a 30-day ceasefire that would see Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners released and more humanitarian aid flow into the enclave. . This prospect, however, seemed distant today.

In the biggest operation they have launched in a month, Israeli tanks entered Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken refuge from the northern Gaza Strip, the area that was the focus of the war in the early days of the conflict. Their main target appears to be the area around the Khan Younis refugee camp, which includes the Nasser and Al Amal hospitals, as well as the UNRWA training center.

“Fighting is escalating in Khan Younis (…) the UNRWA Training Center hosting 10 thousand displaced people has just been hit – buildings on fire and massive casualties – we have been denied safe access to and from the center for two days – people are trapped”, wrote Thomas White, UNRWA official in Gaza, in a post on the X platform.

Residents spoke of fierce fighting in the west of the city, where the army says it has killed “several” groups of gunmen with fire “from snipers, tanks and aerial vehicles”.

The spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health, Ashraf al-Kindra, in a statement asserted that “the occupier is isolating the hospitals in Khan Younis and is carrying out massacres in the western side of the city (…) Hundreds of wounded, sick and giving births are facing serious complications due to the lack of access at the Nasser Medical Complex.”

The Palestinian Red Cross, under whose jurisdiction Al Amal Hospital falls, said soldiers have barricaded staff inside the building and imposed a curfew in the area.

Israel says Hamas fighters are operating in and around the hospitals, which both the Palestinian organization and hospital workers deny.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of the area, which UNRWA says is home to half a million people – four-fifths of whom are displaced from other parts of Gaza. However, Israeli tanks advancing east on the Al Bahar road to Nasser Hospital blocked the escape route from the city to the coastal highway. This road leads to Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. Some people followed dirt roads to escape Khan Younis, said residents and journalists fleeing the area.