Israel’s army chief has threatened a “larger” onslaught in Gaza as the regime issued fresh evacuation orders ahead of a planned invasion across the besieged Palestinian region.

“If we do not see progress in the return of the captives in the near future, we will expand our activities to a larger and more significant operation,” the Israeli military’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir was quoted as saying.

The Hamas resistance movement has said it will only release the remaining 59 captives, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal. 

Separately, the Israeli military ordered Palestinians living in the northern areas of Beit Hanoun and Sheikh Zayed to evacuate a large-scale planned onslaught. 

The United Nations has warned that Israel’s expanding evacuation orders across Gaza are resulting in the “forcible transfer” of people into ever-shrinking areas.

Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began in October 2023. 

Israeli presses ahead with its deadly attacks to claim the lives of Palestinians across Gaza amid worsening humanitarian crises in the besieged Strip.

Gaza rescue teams and medics said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 59 people since dawn Thursday.

Six members of one family were killed when an airstrike leveled their home in northern Gaza City. A relative said the strike happened as the family was sleeping.

Nine people were killed and several wounded in another strike on a former police station in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza.

In another deadly attack, the bodies of at least a dozen people were recovered after the Hajj Ali family home, also in Jabalia, was struck, the civil defense said.

Medics and the civil defense agency reported that another 26 people were killed in strikes across the territory.

Meanwhile, at least one Israeli soldier killed and seven others wounded in the north of the strip. 

The military also acknowledged Thursday that Israeli tank fire killed a UN worker in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah last month.

It had initially denied operating in the area where a Bulgarian employee of United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) was killed on March 19.

The military on Sunday reported on a separate probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers in Gaza. The Israeli killing of medics and humanitarian workers in Gaza on March 23 remains in limelight as more evidences confirm they were executed deliberately.

Israel resumed its military invasion in the Gaza Strip on March 18, after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire that had brought a temporary halt to fighting in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

The Palestinian death toll since the onset of the Israeli brutal military campaign in Gaza has exceeded 51,355.