Israel's army is now operating in the centre of Rafah, the military said as it pursued a much-criticized offensive in the Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israeli troops had discovered rocket launchers, tunnels and Hamas weapons there, the army said on Friday. The stated aim of Israel's operation is to completely eliminate the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which carried out the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel.
Although eyewitnesses had seen Israeli tanks in the centre of the city earlier in the week, there had been no confirmation that ground troops were deployed there until now.
The operation in Rafah has been sharply criticized internationally, including by Israel's closest allies.
Asked in March whether invading Rafah would be a "red line," US President Joe Biden told broadcaster MSNBC: "It is a red line." Speaking to CNN earlier this month, he threatened to restrict the US' supply of weapons to Israel if the Jewish state invaded Rafah.
A week ago, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague ordered Israel to end the military operation in Rafah immediately given the dire humanitarian situation there.
Rafah was the last major urban centre to be entered by Israeli forces, nearly eight months after the start of the war.
The conflict was triggered by the unprecedented massacre carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations in Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip in October. They killed more than 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 hostages.
Israel responded with massive airstrikes and a ground offensive on Gaza. According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, 36,284 people have been killed so far and more than 82,057 others injured. Many areas of the densely populated territory have been left largely uninhabitable with buildings destroyed by airstrikes and bulldozed.
No imminent reopening of Rafah border
Rafah is on the border with Egypt, and the border crossing there has been vital for supplies for the Palestinian population in Gaza. The Israeli operation in Rafah, which began earlier in May, led to the border crossing being shut.
Hopes for the crossing to reopen seemed to be dashed on Friday, as an Egyptian TV channel reported that Cairo had denied the existence of an agreement with Israel to reopen the border.
Citing a high-level source, Egypt's state-affiliated al-Qahera News TV said that "there is no truth" in media reports about an Egyptian-Israeli agreement to reopen the crossing.
"Egypt insists on a full Israeli withdrawal from the crossing as a condition to resume its work," the source said.
Withdrawal from Jabalia
Earlier on Friday, Israel's army announced the end of its operation in the town of Jabalia in the north of the Gaza Strip.
Hundreds of Palestinian fighters are said to have been killed in close combat and airstrikes there.
At least 70 bodies have been found in the Jabalia refugee neighbourhood, the Palestinian coastal civil defence said.
The information from the war zone could not be independently verified.
Fierce fighting has raged in Jabalia for several weeks.
The army says the bodies of seven Israelis who had been abducted in the attack by Hamas on October 7 were found during operations on the ground in recent weeks.
The military said it had also destroyed around 10 kilometres of tunnels and found hundreds of weapons and several weapons production facilities.
The army has captured - and withdrawn from - Jabalia before. Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi recently complained that the lack of a political strategy for the post-war period meant the army was repeatedly forced to fight in places in the Gaza Strip from which it had already pulled out. He cited Jabalia as an example.