The Israeli army has called on people in Rafah to leave further areas of the city, increasing concerns about an expansion of its military operation in the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip.
Families are packing their belongings all over the city, a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) employee wrote on X. "The streets are much emptier."
At the beginning of the week, Israel launched a deployment of ground troops in the eastern outskirts of Rafah in order to expand the fight against the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement.
Some 150,000 Gazans have fled from Rafah since the start of the week, fearing an Israeli advance into the city, UNRWA wrote on X on Saturday.
However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said an estimated 300,000 people had followed the evacuation orders since the beginning of the week, in a statement that could not be independently verified.
Israel's military action in the part of the sealed-off coastal strip bordering Egypt is highly controversial internationally.
More than 1 million Palestinians have crowded into Rafah, half of them children, seeking refuge from Israeli military operations in other parts of the Gaza Strip.
Aid organizations fear that an expansion of the Israeli offensive could lead to hundreds of thousands of civilians being caught between the fronts. The already precarious supply of aid to the people could also collapse completely.
Israel said on Saturday evening it had discovered further tunnels in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari reported that an "underground route" had been found in Zeitoun and a major military operation was taking place there.
According to Hagari, around 30 terrorists were killed and dozens of weapons had been seized in a school. A tunnel had also been discovered in eastern Rafah in the south of the strip.
In the evening, Israeli fighter planes also attacked targets in the northern Gaza Strip, said the army spokesman.
In recent weeks, attempts by Hamas to restore its military facilities had been observed, Hagari said. "Wherever we have knowledge of such attempts by Hamas, we will act."
Calls are growing louder to desist, including from the United Nations and the United States, Israel's main backer.
US President Joe Biden emphasized the responsibility of Hamas with regard to the negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of hostages.
"You know, there would be a ceasefire tomorrow if ... Hamas released the hostages, women, the elderly, and the wounded," Biden said on Saturday at a campaign event in Medina in Washington state, according to the press travelling with him.
The fighting has not yet reached the densely built-up centre of Rafah, which is dotted with improvised refugee camps. On Saturday, however, the Israeli army called on the population to leave other areas in the east and, for the first time, in the centre of the city.
In a message that the military disseminated in Arabic via X, in the form of text messages and on leaflets, the armed forces listed the affected areas, including two refugee camps.
The approximately 300,000 people affected had to move immediately to al-Mawasi on the Mediterranean coast, they said. Aid organizations doubt that a large number of people can be adequately cared for there.
According to employees, the Kuwait hospital, the last reasonably functioning health centre in Rafah, is also located in the zone in question. Employees confirmed to dpa by telephone that the hospital's management had also received an evacuation order from the Israeli military. So far, however, the management has refused to comply.
Instead, efforts are being made to obtain guarantees from the Israeli military via international partners that it will not attack the hospital.
Israel justified the military action in Rafah, which it had threatened months ago, by claiming that it wanted to destroy the last Hamas battalions and destroy the smuggling tunnels suspected under the border with Egypt.
After moving in during the night, the troops continued to take action against the Hamas militias at specific locations in the east of Rafah, the military announced on Saturday.
In the last 24 hours, the forces there had "eliminated numerous terrorists in close combat and destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in the area."
Israeli troops are also still active on the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing.
The information could not initially be independently verified.
Meanwhile, the Hamas-controlled health authority announced that 34,971 Palestinians had been killed and a further 78,641 injured since the outbreak of the Gaza war.
In the last 24 hours, 28 people have been killed and a further 69 injured. These figures could not be independently verified either. The authority does not differentiate between civilians and armed fighters in its figures.
Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza since Hamas militants and other extremist groups launched a bloody raid on Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 200.
Israel responded to the massacre with massive airstrikes and launched a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip.
