The Israeli military announced on Sunday that its forces had begun “extensive ground operations” throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip, advancing its plan to move farther into the enclave and seize more land in an intensified campaign likely to displace more civilians there.
This new stage in the 19-month war is aimed at pressuring Hamas into releasing the hostages it is still holding and ultimately destroying the group or forcing it to surrender, according to the Israeli government and military officials.
Israeli warplanes have been pounding Gaza in recent days to prepare the way for the expansion of ground operations, the military said, adding that the wave of strikes had hit what it described as more than 670 “Hamas terror targets.”
So far, the military said, it has killed “dozens” of Hamas operatives and has destroyed military infrastructure used by the group both above and below ground. But many civilians, including children, have been killed, according to Palestinian officials and residents of Gaza.
The expansion of military operations comes even as Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks for a cease-fire in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
More than 53,000 Gazans have been killed so far in the war, according to health officials in the enclave, whose death tolls do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday that the preliminary number of those killed since dawn stood at more than 90.
Suzanne Abu Daqqa, who lives in Abasan, near the southern city of Khan Younis, said residents had been living through near-constant bombardment over the past few days, rattling her home with terrifying blasts.
But she was even more afraid that a renewed ground invasion could again force her to flee her house — where her family still had some electricity from solar panels, as well as a modest stockpile of rice and flour — for sweltering tent camps near the coast.
“So many have died for nothing,” Ms. Abu Daqqa said. “People want the war to end by all means.”
International efforts have so far failed to broker an end to the war that began with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That attack killed about 1,200 people, and the Palestinian assailants took about 250 hostages back to Gaza.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
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