Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military is “switching gears” in Gaza, dividing and seizing more parts of the strip, a move experts say could mean Israel establishing deeper, more long-term control over the territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the pressure on Gaza would increase until the remaining hostages were returned to Israel. “The more they do not give (back the hostages), the more the pressure will increase until they do,” vowed the Israeli Prime Minster in a video statement released on Wednesday.

The Israeli military is widening its area of control into large parts of the Gaza Strip, the country's prime minister said. Meanwhile, Germany announced that some of its citizens have left Gaza. DW has more.

Israel announced a major expansion of military operations in Gaza on Wednesday, saying large areas of the enclave would be seized and added to its security zones, accompanied by large-scale evacuations of the population.

At least 73 people were killed during Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority, as Israel launched a major expansion of military operations. A recent ceasefire has become a distant memory for Palestinians in the coastal enclave after Israel announced plans to establish another security corridor dividing the strip and the army said it had encircled part of the southern Gazan city of Rafah.

Israel's defense minister said expanding operations will "crush and clean the area" of militants, despite children making up many of the strikes' victims.

Hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans sought shelter on Thursday in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah, part of a newly announced "security zone" they intend to seize.

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

Israel plans to establish another security corridor that divides the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday. "We are conquering the Morag corridor," he said in a video address.

At least 27 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a school in northern Gaza that was serving as a shelter for displaced families, the Hamas-run health ministry says.Dozens more were wounded when the Dar al-Arqam school in the north-eastern Tuffah district of Gaza City was hit,

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports about the deaths at a school-turned-shelter, which came as Israel was intensifying its offensive in Gaza to pressure Hamas to release hostages.