A fresh wave of Israeli strikes overnight has left more than 50 people dead across the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had seized a corridor of land would could split one of Gaza’s largest city’s from the rest of the enclave.

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

Israel's renewed military operation in Gaza "is expanding to crush and cleanse the area of ​​terrorists," Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Wednesday.

The offensive comes as Israel faces criticism after the United Nations said bodies of aid workers were found in a “mass grave."

Israel says its war in Gaza is "expanding to crush and clean the area" of Hamas, but Palestinian civilians are once again being killed and displaced in huge numbers.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said today that troops will "destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure". This would require, he said, a large-scale evacuation of Palestinians, forcing most of the remaining 2.2 million into a small "humanitarian area" in the south of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military is set to expand its ground operations to occupy 25% of Gaza in the coming weeks to apply “maximum pressure” on Hamas to release the remaining hostages, officials

Israel's defense minister says the country's military operation in the Gaza Strip is expanding to seize "large areas" of the Palestinian territory.