GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (AFP) — The Israeli military on Thursday said it controls 40 percent of Gaza City, the largest urban center in the Palestinian territory which it is preparing to conquer after nearly two years of devastating war.

In a televised briefing, Israeli military spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin said that “we hold 40 percent of the territory of Gaza City,” adding that the offensive “will continue to expand and intensify in the coming days.”

Defrin vowed to “increase the pressure” on Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war, “until it is defeated.”

With the vast majority of Gazans already displaced at least once during the war, a senior Israeli military official told journalists on Wednesday that authorities expected the new offensive to push an estimated one million Palestinians south, away from Gaza City.

Israel has intensified in recent days its bombardments of the area of Gaza City, in the territory’s north, ahead of the planned offensive, despite mounting international pressure to halt the campaign.

Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes on Thursday killed more than 30 people in the city, out of at least 64 Palestinians killed across the Gaza Strip.

As concern grows over the dire humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s population of more than two million, one of the European Union’s top officials called the war a “genocide” — a term strongly rejected by Israel, but which several governments and numerous rights groups have adopted.

Basic services ‘collapse’

Civil defense spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said that an Israeli air strike on Thursday hit a tent sheltering a displaced Palestinian family in Gaza City, killing five people including three children.

Contacted by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Israeli military said forces had targeted “a Hamas terrorist,” adding that it “regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians.”

In Tel al-Hawa, the neighborhood where the strike reported by the civil defense took place, AFP footage showed Palestinians outside damaged tents, clearing up scattered belongings.

A pair of blood-stained pink slippers lay amongst the debris.

Israa al-Basous, who lives there, recounted seeing the tent next to hers on fire.

“My children and I were sleeping in the tent when we heard the sound of bombing. Shrapnel fell on us, and my four children started screaming,” she told AFP.

At Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, where the dead and wounded were being received, bodies wrapped in white shrouds lay on the floor of the hospital’s morgue.