Israel has expanded its ground offensive in Gaza as Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said the country had launched a new phase of its “long and hard” war to destroy Hamas.
Daniel Hagari, Israel Defense Forces spokesman, said on Sunday that Israel had sent more troops into Gaza overnight and combat operations were continuing in the north of the strip.
“We are advancing through the stages of the war, according to our plan,” he said. “We are gradually expanding our ground operations.”
He was speaking as phone and internet connections were steadily restored in Gaza, two days after a communication blackout that left many residents without contact to the outside world.
UNRWA, the main UN agency providing relief to in Gaza, said thousands of desperate Palestinians were breaking into its warehouses to seize wheat flour and other staples, in a sign that civil order was starting to break down in the enclave.
Israel has bombarded Gaza for three weeks since the Hamas attack on the country on October 7 in which at least 1,400 Israelis were killed, the deadliest day in the nation’s 75-year history. Hamas also took more than 200 hostages, both civilians and soldiers, whom it continues to hold.
On Sunday the Hamas-controlled health ministry said the death toll in Gaza since the start of the Israeli offensive had risen to 8,005 Palestinians with 20,242 injured.
Israel dispatched troops and tanks into Gaza on Friday night, accompanying the operation with what the UN described as the “most intense Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling” since the start of the war.
The IDF said on Sunday that its fighter jets had attacked more than 450 military targets belonging to Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip over the previous 24 hours, including operational command centres, observation posts and anti-tank missile launching posts.
In the latest evidence that the conflict risks inflaming broader Middle East tensions, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that Israel’s “crimes have crossed the red lines, which may force everyone to take action”.
Sunday also saw an escalation in rocket fire from Lebanon, including projectiles reaching deeper into northern Israel than at any point since the outbreak of hostilities.
Three rockets were fired at the area just north of the Sea of Galilee, with subsequent barrages targeting Israeli towns further west closer to the Israel-Lebanon frontier, according to the Israeli military.
International concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and the many civilian casualties of Israel’s offensive is mounting.
Israeli authorities have been criticised for blocking most humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, allowing in only a small number of trucks each day that the UN and other agencies said were inadequate for the territory’s 2.3mn people.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said thousands of families in Gaza were “sleeping in makeshift shelters or out in the open with little food and water”. It said hospitals were on the verge of collapse and wastewater plants were no longer functioning.
Even Israel’s closest allies are expressing misgivings. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US was pressing Israel “to make sure to distinguish between Hamas and the Palestinian people”.
“We do not stand for the killing of innocent people, whether it be Palestinians, Israelis or otherwise,” he told CNN.
He also told CBS that there “needs to be a political horizon for the Palestinian people, two states for two peoples, the right of Palestinians to live in safety, dignity and equality”.
However, Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the US House of Representatives, told Fox News on Sunday that he expected the chamber to pass “a standalone Israel funding bill” this week.
The White House has called on Congress to approve $106bn in aid for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs but Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has proposed an Israel-only funding package worth $14.5bn.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was “deeply alarmed” by reports that medical teams at Al-Quds hospital in Gaza had been told to immediately evacuate the hospital.
“Evacuating patients, including those in intensive care, on life-support and babies in incubators, is close to, if not impossible in the current situation,” the IFRC said. “Our teams also report violent attacks and shelling very close to the hospital, further endangering people.”
An IDF spokesman declined to comment, saying only that the army had urged all civilians to evacuate the north of Gaza, and “that’s where the hospital is located”.
Médecins Sans Frontières, the medical humanitarian organisation, said northern Gaza was being “razed to the ground, while the whole strip is being hit and civilians have no place to take shelter”.
It added: “The international community must take stronger action to urge Israel to stop the bloodshed. People are being killed and forcibly displaced from their homes, and water and fuel are running low. The atrocity is on a scale never seen before in Gaza.”
But Colonel Elad Goren, a senior officer at Cogat, the Israeli military body responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, disputed international aid groups’ descriptions of the situation in Gaza.
He said there was enough food there for “weeks to come”, that medical supplies were still readily available and that water was ‘fully accessible”, primarily in southern Gaza.
“These aren’t the normal levels [of water for Gaza] but it answers basic humanitarian needs,” he said. He added that Israel was planning to “dramatically increase” the amount of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza from Egypt in the coming week.
