Israeli tanks have reached the outskirts of Gaza City and cut a key road from the north to the south of the besieged Gaza Strip, according to sources.
Palestinian sources told Al Jazeera on Monday that Israeli tanks made an incursion towards Salah al-Din Street, in the middle of the Gaza City governorate, a distance of about 3km (1.8 miles) from the Gaza fence.
Heavy clashes were reported in the area.
They have cut the Salah al-Din road and are firing at any vehicle that tries to go along it,” a resident told the AFP news agency.
Later on Monday, Salama Maarouf, the head of the Hamas government office in Gaza, said the Israeli tanks had retreated from the outskirts of Gaza City.
“There’s absolutely no ground advance inside the residential neighbourhoods in the Gaza Strip. What happened on Salah al-Din Street was the incursion of a few occupation army tanks and a bulldozer,” Maarouf said in a statement.
“These vehicles targeted two civilian cars on Salah al-Din Street and bulldozed the street before the resistance forced them to retreat. There is currently no presence of occupation army vehicles on Salah al-Din Road, and citizen movement has returned to normal on the road,” he said.
Israel has on several occasions warned the 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, to head south to avoid its military strikes as it pushes ahead with a mission to “destroy” Hamas, the group that rules the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Although huge numbers of people have left in recent weeks, tens of thousands more are believed to be still in the zone.