The Israeli military on Sunday issued an evacuation order for a new area of central Gaza, causing panic among Palestinians afraid that Israel was set to expand its ground invasion of the enclave.

Many Palestinians have already been displaced several times from other parts of the enclave and had sought refuge in the area in central Gaza that is now marked for evacuation. The area has remained largely intact during the devastating 21-month Israeli campaign.

It was not immediately clear if the evacuation notice for parts of the city of Deir Al-Balah portended an imminent expansion of Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip or was meant as a pressure tactic to wrest concessions from Hamas in the sluggish negotiations for a cease-fire.

More than 57,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children, have been killed during the war, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The war was ignited by a Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others taken hostage.

Areas close to aid distribution sites in Gaza have become a particular focus of violence in recent weeks amid widespread hunger in the territory. At least 32 people were killed on Saturday, the ministry said, when Israeli soldiers opened fire near a site run by American contractors for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private Israel-backed group, according to survivors and the Israeli military.