Thousands of Israeli reservists have begun reporting for duty as the military presses ahead with its offensive aimed at seizing control of Gaza City.
Ground forces are already pushing into the outskirts of Gaza’s largest urban area.
The city is also coming under heavy Israeli aerial and artillery bombardment, with local hospitals saying that more than 50 Palestinians have been killed there since midnight.
The military has ordered residents to evacuate and head south immediately. The UN says an estimated 20,000 have done so over the past two weeks, but almost a million remain.
UN humanitarian officials have warned that the impact of a full-blown offensive would be “beyond catastrophic”, not only for those in the city but for the entire Gaza Strip.
Last month, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said about 60,000 reservists would be called up ahead of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots II” – the next phase of the ground offensive that it launched in May and has seen it take control of at least 75% of Gaza.
It also extended the service of 20,000 reservists who had already been mobilised.
On Tuesday, an Israeli military official said thousands had begun reporting for duty.
Israeli media said many of the reservists would be deployed to the occupied West Bank and northern Israel to free up active-duty personnel for the offensive.
They also reported that some combat units were seeing lower turnout than for previous call-ups, with reservists who had already served several tours during the 22-month war requesting exemptions for personal or financial reasons.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would conquer all of Gaza after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal broke down in July.
“Stop the war and bring all the hostages home in a deal,” said the daughter of Ilan Weiss, one of the two hostages whose bodies were recovered by Israeli troops.
The IDF’s Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, has urged Netanyahu to accept a current proposal from regional mediators that would see about half of them released during a 60-day truce.
However, the prime minister has said Israel will only accept a comprehensive deal that would see all the hostages freed and Hamas disarmed.
There were reportedly angry exchanges between Zamir and ministers at a meeting on Sunday.
The general warned that their Gaza City plan would put the hostages at risk and lead to Israel establishing a military government there, according to Israeli media.
One unnamed senior minister was quoted by the Ynet website as saying that General Zamir “did everything to convince against the plan.”
In an address to reservists at Nachshonim base in central Israel, Zamir declared that the IDF was preparing for nothing less than “decisive victory.”
“We are going to increase and enhance the strikes of our operation, and that is why we called you.
“We will not stop the war until we defeat the enemy,” he said.
On the ground in Gaza on Tuesday, hospital officials said Israeli strikes and fire had killed at least 95 Palestinians since midnight.
Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City reported 35 of the deaths, including nine people who were killed in an air strike in the southern Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood and seven others killed in a strike on a house in the northern neighbourhood of Sheikh Radwan.
The UN has warned that forcing hundreds of thousands of people to move further south is “a recipe for further disaster and could amount to forcible transfer,” which would be a war crime.
Global food security experts have confirmed that a famine is occurring in Gaza City and projected that it will expand to the central city of Deir al-Balah and the southern city of Khan Younis by the end of September.
The UN has also said tent camps for the displaced in the south are overcrowded and unsafe, and that southern hospitals are operating at several times their capacity.
In Khan Younis on Tuesday, Nasser hospital said it had received the bodies of 31 people killed by Israeli fire, including 13 who died in two strikes in al-Mawasi and Khan Younis camp.
Medics in the hospital’s emergency department told reporters that most of the casualties being treated were children and elderly.
“We can’t deal with any more cases due to high pressure on us and lack of supplies. The CT [scanner] is now broken down, so we are working blindly. The current situation is catastrophic,” one doctor said.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said 13 Palestinians, including three children, died from malnutrition across the territory in the past 24 hours.
The ministry said the latest fatalities raised the overall death toll from malnutrition since the war began to 361, including 185 in August alone.
The UN has said the famine is a “man-made disaster” and said Israel is obliged under international humanitarian law to ensure food and medical supplies for Gaza’s population.
Israel’s war in Gaza started in October 2023, after Hamas launched a major attack on southern Israel.
Since then, at least 63,633 people have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, according to official reports.
BBC/Jide Johnson.