Israel’s military steps up offensive in Gaza

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israel’s military stepped up an offensive Thursday that is intended to put new pressure on Hamas and eventually expel the terrorist group.

The Israeli military said it struck a “Hamas command and control center” in the Gaza City area, and said it took steps to lessen harm to civilians. Israel gave the same reason — striking Hamas terrorists in a “command and control center” — for attacking a United Nations building used as a shelter a day earlier, killing at least 17 people.

The Israeli military on Thursday also ordered more residents in parts of northern Gaza to move to shelters in the western side of Gaza City, warning that it planned to “work with extreme force in your area.”

The fresh evacuation orders came a day after senior government officials said Israel said it would seize large parts of the Palestinian territory and establish a new security corridor across it.

To pressure Hamas, Israel has imposed a month-long blockade on food, fuel and humanitarian aid.

Hamas says it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for the release of more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli pullout from Gaza. The group has rejected demands that it lay down its arms or leave the territory.

The stepped-up offensive came as the Israeli military promised an independent investigation of a March 23 operation in which its forces opened fire on ambulances in southern Gaza.

The military said the probe would be led by an expert fact-finding body “responsible for examining exceptional incidents” during the war.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel was establishing a new security corridor across Gaza to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory.

Israel has also reasserted control over the Netzarim corridor, a military zone that separates the northern third of Gaza from the rest of the narrow strip. Both that and another corridor, along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, run from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea.

Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel plans to maintain overall security control of Gaza after the war and implement President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle much of its population elsewhere.

Palestinians have rejected the proposal, viewing it as expulsion from their homeland.

The war began when Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, most of whom have since been released in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Israel rescued eight living hostages and has recovered dozens of bodies.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-led Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 terrorists.

Meanwhile, Israeli strikes in Syria reportedly killed at least nine people in the southwest of the country on Thursday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Turkey of playing a “negative role” in Syria.

“They are doing their utmost to have Syria as a Turkish protectorate, it’s clear that this is their intention,” he told a news conference in Paris. “We don’t think that it was good when Syria was an Iranian proxy …. And we don’t think that Syria should be” a Turkish protectorate.