GAZA CITY, Palestine

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, said Thursday that it targeted an Israeli army command and control site in Gaza City with heavy mortars.

“We shelled an enemy command and control site east of the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City with heavy mortars, achieving direct hits on the troops,” the group said in a statement.

It added that fighters detected “two Black Hawk and Yas'ur helicopters landing to evacuate the dead and wounded” from the site.

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the claims.

Israeli military vehicles advanced Monday from the Netzarim axis toward the center of the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in southeastern Gaza City, following hours of airstrikes and artillery shelling the previous night.

The incursion led to the displacement of hundreds of Palestinians from areas near the incursion axis in the neighborhood toward the western parts of the city.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnations amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

More than 37,400 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and more than 85,600 others injured, according to local health authorities.

More than eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio