Tel Aviv [Israel], October 29: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that Israeli forces had unleashed the second phase of the Gaza war as they pressed ground operations against Hamas militants, vowing to "destroy the enemy above ground and below ground."
Gaza's besieged people had barely any communications with the outside world as Israeli jets dropped more bombs on the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave and military chiefs said a long-threatened ground offensive was gearing up.
Speaking at a press conference in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu warned Israelis to expect a "long and hard" military campaign but stopped short of calling the current Israeli ground incursions a full-scale invasion.
He reiterated Israel's appeal to Palestinian civilians to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip where Israel was focusing its attack, and vowed that every effort would be made to rescue the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas.
"This is the second stage of the war whose goals are clear - to destroy Hamas' governing and military capabilities and to bring the hostages home," Netanyahu told reporters.
"We are only at the start," he said. "We will destroy the enemy above ground and below ground."
Israel has tightened its blockade on and bombarded Gaza for three weeks after the Islamist group Hamas' Oct. 7 assault killed 1,400 Israelis in the deadliest day of the nation's 75-year history.
Western countries have generally backed what they say is Israel's right to self defence but there has been mounting international concern over the toll from the bombing and growing calls for a pause to allow aid to reach Gaza civilians.
Health authorities in the Gaza Strip of 2.3 million people say 7,650 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's campaign to obliterate the militants.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority governs parts of the occupied West Bank while Hamas rules Gaza, said, "Our people in the Gaza Strip are facing a war of genocide and massacres committed by the Israeli occupation forces in full view of the entire world."
With many buildings reduced to rubble and shelter hard to find, Gazans are short of food, water, fuel and medicines. Their plight got worse from Friday night when phone and internet services were cut - followed by heavy bombing through the night.
"God help anyone under the rubble," said one Gaza journalist, who spent a terrifying night in a building stairway watching "belts of fire" as bombs fell and Israeli forces appeared to exchange fire with Palestinian fighters.
Without mobile phones, no one could call ambulances, and emergency services were short of fuel anyway, he said.
Israel's chief military spokesperson declined to say whether Israel was behind the telecommunications blackout in Gaza but said it would do what it needed to protect its forces.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
