The Israeli military has intensified strikes on parts of Gaza after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that the country’s forces would be “switching gears” in the territory, dividing and seizing more parts of the strip.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip is expanding to seize “large areas,” the defense minister said, while officials at hospitals inside the Palestinian territory said that Israeli strikes overnight and into Wednesday had killed more than 40 people, nearly a dozen of them children.

Israel is “carving up” the Gaza Strip in a bid to pressure Hamas into freeing hostages and will establish a new corridor, parallel to the Egyptian border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said with the army escalating ground operations in the south.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Wednesday a major expansion of the military’s operation in Gaza involving the seizure of large areas of land that would be “incorporated into Israel’s security zones.

The Israeli military has indicated it could soon launch another major offensive in Rafah and ordered most of the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip evacuated.

Aid agencies say the workers were killed and buried in a mass grave in Rafah in southern Gaza. Residents described being shot at along the evacuation route.

In pressing forward with its assault on the territory, Israel hopes to squeeze Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages. But other objectives have emerged.

As Israel orders wide new evacuations across the Gaza Strip, Palestinians say they are crushed by exhaustion and hopelessness at the prospect of fleeing once again.