Israel expands Gaza offensive as dozens killed

JERUSALEM/GAZA — Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip is expanding and it aims to seize "large areas", the defense minister said, while officials at hospitals inside the Palestinian territory said Israeli strikes overnight and into Wednesday killed dozens of people.

Israel's offensive in the Palestinian territory was "expanding to crush and clean the area" of militants and "seizing large areas that will be added to the security zones of the state of Israel," Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a written statement.

It came as Israel continued to target the Gaza Strip, with airstrikes overnight killing 17 people in the southern city of Khan Younis. Another 15 people were killed in a strike in the north of the strip on Wednesday, according to officials at hospitals.

Later on Wednesday, officials at the Indonesian Hospital said an Israeli strike on a building of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip killed 15 people, including nine children and two women.

The Palestinian Civil Defense said the building had been a clinic of UNRWA that was now being used to house displaced people. It said the attack hit two rooms in the building, and that it evacuated the bodies of seven of those killed, as well as 12 people who were wounded.

The Israeli military issued a new evacuation order for residents of Shujaiya and some other districts in Gaza's north.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the military was "dissecting" the Gaza Strip and seizing territory to pressure Hamas into freeing hostages still held in the enclave.

The military is "dissecting the (Gaza) Strip and increasing the pressure step by step so that (Hamas) will return our hostages", Netanyahu said in a statement, adding that Israel "is seizing territory, striking terrorists, and destroying infrastructure".

Hamas has remained defiant and rejected the latest Israeli proposal on a Gaza truce, two officials from the movement told AFP on Wednesday.

They accused Israel of "blocking a proposal from Egypt and Qatar and trying to derail any agreement".

After two months of truce in Gaza and several weeks of unsuccessful negotiations to extend it, Israel resumed its bombings and military offensive in Gaza on March 18.

The conflict began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.

Israel's offensive has killed more than 50,420 Palestinians in Gaza, including hundreds killed in strikes since the ceasefire ended about two weeks ago, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

Agencies via Xinhua