Israel’s announcement that the army will seize “large areas” of the Palestinian territory comes after a warning last week that the military would soon “operate with full force” in additional parts of Hamas-run Gaza.

Israel restarted intense bombing of Gaza on 18 March and then launched a new ground offensive, ending a nearly two-month ceasefire in the war with Hamas.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s 7 October, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 50,357 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.