Battles raged in Gaza on Saturday after Israel’s army expanded ground operations three weeks after experiencing the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

The United Nations warned of a looming “unprecedented avalanche of human suffering” inside the Gaza Strip, after weeks of relentless Israeli bombing, while the General Assembly called for an “immediate humanitarian truce”.

“We are confronting an Israeli ground incursion in Beit Hanoun (in the northern Gaza Strip) and east Bureij (in the centre) and violent engagements are taking place on the ground,” Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said.

Israel launched its bombardment of Gaza after Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and taking nearly 230 others hostage.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said Friday that Israeli strikes had now killed 7,326 people, more than 3,000 of them children.