Israeli forces storm Gaza's Khan Younis, hospitals overrun

In what appeared to be the biggest ground assault since a truce collapsed last week, residents said Israeli tanks had entered the eastern parts of Khan Younis for the first time, crossing from the Israeli border fence and advancing west.

Some took up positions inside the town of Bani Suhaila on Khan Younis' eastern outskirts, while others continued further and were stationed on the edge of a Qatari-funded housing development called Hamad City, residents said.

The Israelis, who seized the northern half of Gaza last month before pausing for the week-long truce, say they are now extending their ground campaign to the rest of the enclave to fulfill their objective of annihilating its Hamas rulers.

"We're moving ahead with the second stage now. A second stage that is going to be difficult militarily," government spokesperson Eylon Levy told reporters in a briefing.

Israel was open to "constructive feedback" on reducing harm to civilians as long as the advice is consistent with its aim of destroying Hamas, he said.

At Khan Younis' main Nasser hospital, the wounded arrived by ambulance, car, flatbed truck and donkey cart after what survivors described as a strike that hit a school being used as a shelter for the displaced.

Inside a ward, almost every inch of floor space was taken up by the wounded, medics hurrying from patient to patient while relatives wailed.

A doctor carried the small limp body of a dead boy in a track suit and placed him in a corner, arms splayed across the blood-smeared tile. On the floor next to him, surrounded by discarded bandages and rubber gloves, lay a wounded boy and girl, their limbs tangled with the stands holding the IV drips in their arms.

Two young girls were being treated, still covered in dust from the collapse of the house that had buried their family.

"My parents are under the rubble," sobbed one. "I want my mum, I want my mum, I want my family."

Outside, men carried corpses in white and bloodied shrouds to be taken away for funerals. Around a dozen bodies lay on the ground. Five or six were taken away in a motorcycle cart.

Aisha al-Raqb, a 70-year-old woman, said her son Iyad was among the dead and held out a blood-stained hand.

"This is his blood. This is his precious blood. May Allah have mercy on his soul. My darling. I (want to) smell his scent, smell his scent, oh God, oh God," she said.

Gaza health ministry spokesperson Ashra al-Qidra said at least 43 corpses had already reached Nasser hospital that morning, and dozens more were feared trapped under rubble or in locations unsafe for ambulances to recover them.

"Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip are totally collapsing, they cannot deal with the quantity and quality of injuries that arrive at the hospitals," he said.