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.

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.

The U.N. said Israel killed the people as they were trying to aid injured civilians, and then buried them in a mass grave. Israel said nine were militants.

Israel will “seize large areas” of the Gaza Strip in a major expansion of military operations, the defense minister said Wednesday, as airstrikes continued to pound the blockaded territory where supplies are quickly dwindling.

Palestinians displaced from Rafah on Thursday voiced their despair over Israel's announcement that it would cut the city off from the rest of the Strip, by establishing a new security corridor to pressure Hamas.

Israeli strikes across the southern Gaza Strip have killed at least 26 Palestinians overnight, including a senior Hamas political leader and several women and children.

The Israeli military on Monday issued sweeping evacuation orders covering most of Rafah, indicating it could soon launch another major ground operation in the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip. Israel ended its ceasefire with the Hamas militant group and renewed its air and ground war earlier this month.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is establishing a new security corridor across Gaza. In a statement issued Wednesday, he described it as the Morag corridor, using the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting it would run between the two southern cities.