ISRAELI forces have dropped leaflets warning Palestinians to flee parts of southern Gaza, residents said.

The move signals a possible expansion of Israel’s offensive to areas where hundreds of thousands of people who heeded earlier evacuation orders are crowded into UN-run shelters and family homes.

Broadening operations to the south – where Israel already carries out daily raids – threatens to worsen an already severe humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory.

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More than 1.5 million people have been internally displaced in Gaza, with most having fled to the south where food, water and electricity are increasingly scarce.

It is not clear where else they could go, as Egypt has refused to allow a mass transfer on to its soil.

The leaflets, dropped in areas east of the southern town of Khan Younis, warned civilians to evacuate and said anyone in the vicinity of militants or their positions “is putting his life in danger”.

Similar leaflets were dropped over northern Gaza for weeks ahead of the ground invasion.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday the ground operation will eventually “include both the north and south. We will strike Hamas wherever it is”.

The military says it has largely consolidated its control of the north, including seizing and demolishing government buildings.

With most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people crowded into the territory’s south, residents say bread is scarce and supermarket shelves are bare. Families cook on wood fires for lack of fuel. Central electricity and running water have been out for weeks.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers continue searching Shifa Hospital in the north of Gaza in a raid that began early on Wednesday.

They displayed guns they say were found hidden in one building but have yet to release any evidence of the central Hamas command centre that Israel said is concealed beneath the complex.

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Hamas and staff at the hospital, Gaza’s largest, deny the allegations.

Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza, said Israeli tanks were inside the medical compound and soldiers had entered buildings, including the emergency and surgery departments, which house intensive care units.

The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel on Saturday.

There was no word on the condition of another 36 babies, who the ministry said earlier were at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators.

Hamas and Gaza health officials deny militants operate in Shifa — a hospital that employs some 1500 people and has more than 500 beds.

The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by a wide-ranging Hamas attack into southern Israel on October 7 in which the militants killed over 1200 people, mostly civilians, and captured 240 men, women and children.

Israel responded with a weeks-long air campaign and a ground invasion of northern Gaza, vowing to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.

More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Another 2700 have been reported missing, with most believed to be buried under the rubble.