ISRAELI warplanes continued to pound Gaza over the weekend, striking near the area’s largest hospital today.

The Israelis claim, without evidence, that Hamas has a command post under Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

But the building is full to the brim with patients and packed with tens of thousands of Palestinians seeking shelter with nowhere else to go.

“Reaching the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who is sheltering in the hospital, said over the phone.

The attack near the hospital came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “second stage” in Israel’s war on Hamas, and after the Israelis cut off the territory from the rest of the world as they closed down all lines of communication.

Three weeks after Hamas launched its uprising on October 7, Israeli tanks and infantry pushed into Gaza in what appears to be the start of their much-hyped ground offensive.

Gaza City resident Abdallah Sayed said without the eyes of the world watching, the Israeli bombing was “the most violent and intense” since the war started.

Communications were restored to many people in Gaza early today, according to local telecoms companies, internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmation on the ground.

Residents said that the latest air strikes destroyed most of the roads leading to the hospital. 

Israel says that most residents have heeded its orders to flee to the south, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones.

The military escalation has ratcheted up domestic pressure on Israel’s ultra-right-wing government to secure the release of some 230 prisoners of war taken by Hamas on October 7.

Desperate family members met Mr Netanyahu yesterday and expressed support for an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Hamas’s top leader in Gaza Yehia Sinwar said that Palestinian militants “are ready immediately” to release all prisoners of war if Israel releases all of the thousands of Palestinians held in its prisons. 

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, dismissed the offer as “psychological terror.”

Mr Netanyahu told a nationally televised news conference that “this is the second stage of the war” and while Israel is determined to bring back all the hostages, the main aim was to destroy Hamas.

While more than 1,400 Israelis are known to have died, the Palestinian death toll has now topped 8,000, with 377 deaths reported since late on Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. 

Most of those killed have been women and minors, the ministry said.

An estimated 1,700 people remain trapped beneath the rubble.

More than 1.4 million people across Gaza have fled their homes, nearly half crowding into United Nations schools and shelters, following repeated warnings by the Israeli military that they would be in danger if they remained in northern Gaza. 

A number of UN facilities have also been struck by the Israelis.

As the humanitarian crisis deepens by the hour, with food, water and fuel cut off by the Israelis, thousands of Palestinians were forced to break into aid warehouses in Gaza to take flour and basic hygiene products, a UN agency said today.

This was a mark of the growing desperation gripping Palestinians who have been denied food, water and fuel in an act of collective punishment denounced by much of the world as a war crime.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) director Thomas White said that the warehouse break-ins were because “people are scared, frustrated and desperate.”

Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the agency, said that the crowds broke into four facilities yesterday.

She said that the warehouses did not contain any fuel, which has been in critically short supply since Israel cut off all shipments after the start of the war.

Israel has allowed only a small trickle of aid to enter from Egypt, some of which was stored in one of the warehouses that was broken into, UNRWA said.