Palestinian Territories (AFP)— Intense fighting raged Saturday in the Gaza city of Khan Yunis, sending residents fleeing further south as Israel’s military targets the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The unabated hostilities came alongside soaring tensions between Israel and the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which has been at the heart of humanitarian efforts in the war-battered Gaza Strip.

On Friday the agency said it had sacked several staff whom Israel accused of involvement in Hamas’s October 7 attack, leading some key donor countries to suspend funding.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that Israel wanted to ensure the UN agency, which provided education, health and other services to Palestinians in Gaza, “will not be part of the day after” the bloodiest-ever war in the territory.

A day earlier, the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Israel must prevent possible acts of genocide in the conflict — and allow in aid — but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.

Israel’s military campaign began soon after Hamas’s October 7 attack that resulted in about 1,140 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Militants also seized about 250 hostages and Israel says around 132 of them remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 28 dead captives.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas, and Hamas-ruled Gaza’s health ministry says the Israeli military offensive has killed at least 26,257 people, most of them women and children.

The army says at least 220 soldiers have been killed since Israel began its Gaza ground operations, which are now focused around Khan Yunis, the southern hometown of Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar.

Israel’s military on Saturday reported numerous militants killed “from close range” in Khan Yunis and said troops raided the house of a Sinwar associate and found weapons.

Special forces, in a separate operation “raided a weapons warehouse” in the Khan Yunis area where they found guns and ammunition, the army said.

Palestinians are fleeing the fighting, adding to the number already crowded into Rafah, near the Egyptian border, where the United Nations says most of Gaza’s estimated 1.7 million displaced have converged.

They live in the street, where sewage flows, amid “conditions of desperation conducive to a complete breakdown in order,” said Ajith Sunghay of the UN Human Rights Office.

AFPTV images showed people wading through ankle-deep water around tent-like plastic shelters in Rafah, where bombardment still threatens.

“There is nowhere safe in the Gaza Strip,” said Mohammed al-Shaer, inside an apartment whose wall had been blown out, leaving rubble on the floor around a child’s bed.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 135 people were killed in Khan Yunis overnight.

Experts have told AFP that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s steadfast vow to eliminate Hamas is increasingly seen within his war cabinet as incompatible with returning the hostages held in Gaza.

His failure to bring home the captives has led to mounting protests and calls for early elections, more of which took place on Saturday night.