JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the nation Saturday night that the military has opened a “second stage” in the war against Hamas by sending ground forces into Gaza and expanding attacks from the ground, air and sea. He said it will only increase ahead of a broad ground invasion into the territory.
“It will be long and difficult,” he said. “We are ready.”
The bombardment, described by Gaza residents as the most intense of the war, knocked out most communications in Gaza. This largely cut off the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people from the world, while enabling the Israeli military to control the narrative in the new stage of fighting.
The military released grainy images Saturday showing tank columns moving slowly in open areas of Gaza, many apparently near the border, and said warplanes bombed dozens of Hamas tunnels and underground bunkers. The underground sites are a key target in Israel’s campaign to crush the territory’s ruling group after its bloody incursion into Israel three weeks ago.
The escalation brought more domestic pressure on Israel’s government to bring about the release of dozens of hostages seized in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, amid concerns they were being held underground.
Desperate family members met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, a swap floated by a Hamas spokesman.
Netanyahu told the nationally televised news conference that Israel is determined to bring back all the hostages, and maintained that the expanding ground operation “will help us in this mission.” He said he couldn’t reveal everything that is being done due to the sensitivity and secrecy of the efforts.
“This is the second stage of the war, whose objectives are clear: To destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home,” he said.
Early in the war, Israel amassed hundreds of thousands of troops along the border. Until now, troops had conducted brief nightly ground incursions before returning to Israel.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza on Saturday rose to just over 7,700 people in the three weeks since the war began, with 377 deaths reported since late Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. A majority of those killed have been women and minors, the ministry said.
Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra told reporters that the disruption of communications has “totally paralyzed” the health network. Residents had no way of calling ambulances, and emergency teams were chasing the sounds of artillery barrages and airstrikes to search for people in need.
An estimated 1,700 people remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to the health ministry, which has said it bases its estimates on distress calls it received.
Some civilians were using their bare hands to pull injured people from the rubble and loading them into personal cars or donkey carts to rush them to the hospital. In a video posted by local news media, Palestinians were sprinting down a ravaged street with a wounded man covered in the dust of a building’s collapse while he winced, eyes shut, on a stretcher. “Ambulance! Ambulance!” the men shouted as they shoved the stretcher into the back of a pickup truck and shouted at the driver, “Go! Go!”
Some Gaza residents traveled by foot or car to check on relatives and friends. “The bombs were everywhere, the building was shaking,” said Hind al-Khudary, a journalist in central Gaza and one of a few people with cellphone service. “We can’t reach anyone or contact anyone. I do not know where my family is.”
Israel says its strikes target Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate from among civilians, putting them in danger.
The World Health Organization appealed to “the humanity in all those who have the power to do so to end the fighting now” in Gaza. “There are more wounded every hour. But ambulances cannot reach them in the communications blackout. Morgues are full. More than half of the dead are women and children,” it said in a statement, and it expressed “grave concerns” about reported bombardment near hospitals in the northern half of Gaza.
Palestinians say this war is robbing them not only of their loved ones but also of the funeral rites that long have offered mourners some dignity and closure in the midst of unbearable grief. Overcrowded cemeteries have compelled families to dig up long-buried bodies and deepen the holes.
Across Gaza, terrified civilians were huddling in homes and shelters with food and water supplies running out. Electricity was knocked out by Israel in the early stages of the war.
More than 1.4 million people have fled their homes, nearly half crowding into U.N. schools and shelters, following repeated warnings by the Israeli military that they would be in grave danger if they remained in northern Gaza.
The military renewed such warnings Saturday, in leaflets dropped over Gaza. A large number of residents have not evacuated to the south, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones where conditions are increasingly dire.
Humanitarian workers say the trickle of aid Israel has allowed to enter from Egypt in the past week is a tiny fraction of what is needed. Gaza hospitals have been scrounging for fuel to run emergency generators that power incubators and other life-saving equipment.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which runs an extensive network of shelters and schools for nearly half the displaced Gaza residents, has lost contact with most of its staff, spokeswoman Juliette Touma said Saturday. She said that coordinating aid efforts was now “extremely challenging.”
The intensified air and ground campaign raised new concerns about dozens of hostages dragged into Gaza. On Saturday, hundreds of relatives of hostages gathered in downtown Tel Aviv and demanded that the government put the return of their loved ones ahead of Israel’s military objectives.
In comments likely to inflame these tensions, the spokesman of the Hamas military wing on Saturday offered a comprehensive swap of hostages for the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The spokesman, using the nom de guerre Abu Obeida, said in a televised speech that the price for freeing the hostages, said by Israel to number 229, is “emptying the Zionist prisons of all detainees.”
Netanyahu told relatives of the hostages that “we will exercise and exhaust every possibility to bring them home,” his office said in a statement. He did not specify a military or diplomatic plan.
Military officials have said they are trying to both topple Hamas and bring back the hostages but have not explained how they could obtain both objectives at the same time.
The Israeli army spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said four hostages were released in recent days through mediation by Qatar and Egypt. Hagari dismissed news reports about a possible cease-fire deal in exchange for the release of hostages, saying Hamas was engaged in a “cynical exploitation” of relatives’ anxieties.
In Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said his government was working to de-escalate the conflict through its talks with the warring parties to release prisoners and hostages. On Saturday, he spoke with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about those efforts, his office said.
Guterres reiterated his appeal for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, along with the unconditional release of hostages and “necessary massive scale up” of humanitarian aid to the strip’s 2.3 million people.
Guterres said he was “surprised by an unprecedented escalation of the bombardments and their devastating impacts” and “the situation must be reversed.”
Among many, impatience was growing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told hundreds of thousands of people at a pro-Palestinian rally in Istanbul on Saturday that his country was making preparations to proclaim Israel a “war criminal” for its actions in Gaza. He did not elaborate and his office said it could not comment on the statement.
Erdogan’s government recently restored full diplomatic ties with Israel, whose foreign minister on Saturday said he had ordered the return of Israel’s diplomatic mission from Turkey to reassess ties.
Elsewhere, tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters turned out in London for a second straight weekend to demand a cease-fire in Gaza.
More than 1,400 people were slain in Israel during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, according to the Israeli government. Among those killed were at least 311 soldiers, according to the military.
Palestinian militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel over the past three weeks.
The overall number of deaths in Gaza and Israel far exceeds the combined toll of all four previous Israel-Hamas wars, estimated at around 4,000.
Israel has said it aims to crush Hamas’ rule in Gaza and its ability to threaten Israel. But how Hamas’ defeat will be measured and an invasion’s endgame remain unclear. Israel says it does not intend to rule the tiny territory but has not said who it expects will — even as Gallant suggested a long-term insurgency could ensue.
The conflict has threatened to ignite a wider war across the region. Arab nations — including U.S. allies and ones that have reached peace deals or normalized ties with Israel — have raised increasing alarm over a potential ground invasion.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Samya Kullab in Baghdad contributed to this report.
