An IDF reservist soldier was killed during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip Monday, the military announced Tuesday, the second death within hours as the army presses ahead with a new offensive in the coastal territory.

The announcement came as local media reported that 18 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza and terror group Hamas said that nearly 20 people died of starvation over the previous two days. Neither of the figures could be immediately verified.

The slain soldier was named as Sgt. Maj. (res.) Vladimir Loza, 36, of the 5th Brigade’s 7020th Battalion, from Ashkelon.

According to a preliminary IDF probe, Loza was killed when a blast caused a building to collapse during operations in the Rafah area. The military suspects the blast was caused by an explosive device planted by Gazan fighters.

Loza’s death raised to 456 the toll of Israeli forces killed fighting inside Gaza since the war started with the devastating October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel. Another soldier, Staff Sgt. Amit Cohen, 19, of the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion, also died Monday in Gaza.

According to reports in Palestinian media, 16 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike Tuesday morning in the Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City.

Two additional fatalities and several injuries were also reported in a separate strike in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, as the military expanded ground operations to the city.

Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during 21 months of conflict, and the Al-Shati camp, on the Mediterranean coast, hosts thousands of people displaced from the north in tents and makeshift shelters.

Raed Bakr, 30, lives in the camp with his three children and said he heard “a massive explosion” at about 1:40 am on Tuesday, which blew their tent away.

“I felt like I was in a nightmare. Fire, dust, smoke and body parts flying through the air, dirt everywhere. The children were screaming,” Bakr, whose wife was killed last year, told AFP.

With private cars off the road due to fuel shortages, neighbors carried some of the wounded on foot. “There were no vehicles or even donkey carts,” he said.

Muhannad Thabet, 33, who also lives at the Al-Shati camp, called it “a night of terror” due to “non-stop air strikes and explosions.”

He said he carried a six-year-old child to get treatment and said the nearby Shifa hospital — once one of Gaza’s largest — was overwhelmed with wounded people.

AFP footage from central Gaza showed a large plume of smoke rising over Deir el-Balah on Tuesday while a surveillance drone was heard buzzing overhead.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were living in the Deir el-Balah area, which until now had been considered relatively safe.

Some 30,000 were living in displacement sites.

OCHA said nearly 88 percent of the entire Gaza Strip was now either under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarized zones, forcing the population of 2.4 million into an ever-shrinking space.

Additionally, the director of Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry told Al Jazeera that 20 people have died from starvation in the past 48 hours.

The figure could not be independently verified, and Israel accuses Hamas of inflating casualty numbers.

There was no immediate comment from the IDF.

Reports of the latest death toll came as the Roman Catholic church’s most senior cleric in the Holy Land said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was “morally unacceptable.”

“We have seen men holding out in the sun for hours in the hope of a simple meal,” Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa told a news conference in Jerusalem after visiting Gaza.

His visit came after an Israeli army strike on the only Catholic church in Gaza killed three people last week, prompting Pope Leo XIV to condemn the “barbarity” of the war and the blind “use of force.”

The military issued a statement responding to reports that troops entered a building housing World Health Organization personnel in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah a day earlier and detained several staff, as well as damaged the facility in strikes.

On Sunday, the IDF had issued an evacuation warning for several zones in Deir al-Balah, ahead of a new ground offensive in the area.

The military said that before operations began, it warned the civilian population to evacuate “and was in contact with the international organizations working in the area.”

“We emphasize that the IDF maintains continuous and consistent contact with the international organizations, and throughout the war, the IDF has facilitated the safe evacuations of their personnel from evacuated areas, in coordination with the troops and in accordance with operational requirements,” the statement continued.

The coordination efforts are to “facilitate the relocation of critical facilities to alternate locations based on the needs of the organizations,” the IDF said.

According to the military, the incident at the WHO facility on Monday began after troops identified shooting toward them in Deir al-Balah and returned fire.

The IDF said that as part of the offensive, troops detained “several individuals suspected of involvement in terror.”

“After questioning on the ground, the majority were released and evacuated from the area in coordination with the international organizations,” the IDF said, adding that “the suspects are treated in accordance with international law.”

WHO, in a statement, said that the “Israeli military entered the premises, forcing women and children to evacuate on foot toward al-Mawasi amid active conflict. Male staff and family members were handcuffed, stripped, interrogated on the spot, and screened at gunpoint. Two WHO staff and two family members were detained. Three were later released, while one staff member remains in detention.”

The IDF responded to the claims, saying that “at times during field questioning, it is necessary for individuals suspected of terrorist activity to temporarily remove parts of their clothing in order to ensure that they are not concealing explosive belts or other weapons.”

“The IDF will not refrain from operating in areas where terrorist activity threatens the security of the State of Israel,” the military added.

A military source said that the IDF is aware that damage was caused to the WHO residence facility, but stressed that it is unaware of any injuries among the staff.

WHO also claimed that its main warehouse in the area was damaged. The IDF has not commented on those claims.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 58,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.