
People walk past rubble and damaged buildings in the Tuffah district east of Gaza City. AFP
Israeli troops, tanks and aircraft were invading in Gaza's biggest urban area on the eve of new truce talks in Qatar that aim to free the captives and halt the war raging into its 10th month.
A source with knowledge of the talks said CIA director William Burns and Israel's Mossad chief David Barnea would travel to Doha on Wednesday and also meet the Qatari prime minister, a key mediator.
Hamas has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately stepping up battles in Gaza City and in far-southern Rafah in order to thwart a ceasefire agreement.
The resistance group's political chief Ismail Haniyeh said he had made "urgent contact" with mediators, warning that the "catastrophic consequences" of the battles could "reset the negotiation process to square one".
Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, described the latest Gaza City fighting as "the most intense in months", with the resistance group using rockets, mortars and explosives.
Israeli occupation forces, on Monday, intensified fighting and bombardment across the city's east, west and south.
Residents reported overnight helicopter strikes, "explosions and numerous gun battles" in the city's southwest.
Mass evacuations
The United Nations said tens of thousands of civilians have been affected by the renewed Israeli offensive on the city and three separate evacuation orders Israel has declared in Gaza City since June 27.
Thousands were again seen marching down dusty roads past bombed-out buildings, with mothers carrying babies and others packing their sparse belongings onto donkey carts.
The UN Human Rights Office said it was "appalled" at the new orders to civilians, "many of whom have been forcibly displaced multiple times, to evacuate to areas where IDF military operations are ongoing and where civilians continue to be killed and injured."
The office said Gazans told to leave central Gaza City for the west on Monday were caught up in new fighting as the army "intensified its strikes in the south and west of Gaza City, targeting the very areas where they had instructed people to move to".
Gaza City residents have now been told to move south to Deir Al-Balah, which the UN office said "is already seriously overcrowded with Palestinians displaced from other areas of the Gaza Strip".
Fighting has also raged elsewhere in the territory, including in the Nuseirat, Khan Younis and Rafah areas.
The occupation army said Monday its air force had struck a Nuseirat school.
A source at the local Al-Awda hospital said it had received several wounded after an attack on a school run by the UN agency UNRWA.
A strike on Saturday on another Nuseirat school had killed 16 people, the building was housing displaced people.
'Points of divergence'
Israel launched a bloody war on Gaza and has killed at least 38,193 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.
Qatar has been engaged in months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, with support from Egypt and the United States, in efforts to reach a truce and and an exchange of captives for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Hamas signalled last week that it would drop its insistence on a "complete" ceasefire, a demand Israel has repeatedly rejected.
Netanyahu's office reiterated Sunday that "any deal will allow Israel to return and fight until all the goals of the war are achieved".
A Palestinian official with knowledge of the talks told AFP that while a Hamas delegation would take part in indirect talks with Israel, there were several "points of divergence".
The official said these included Israel's refusal to release some Palestinian prisoners serving long sentences, and questions on when Israel would withdraw from areas along Gaza's southern border with Egypt.
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