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Israeli forces waged ground operations against Hamas in Gaza on Sunday in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the second phase of a three-week-old war aimed at crushing the Palestinian group.

Gaza’s besieged residents faced a near-total communications and Internet blackout as Israel’s warplanes dropped bombs and its troops and armour pushed into the Hamas-ruled enclave, with Israeli military chiefs signalling they were gearing up for an expanded ground offensive.

Speaking at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Saturday, Netanyahu warned Israelis to expect a “long and hard” campaign but stopped short of calling the current incursions an invasion. Some of U.S. President Joe Biden’s aides have advised Israeli counterparts to hold off on an immediate all-out assault, U.S. officials have said.

Even as initial ground operations appeared limited for now, Netanyahu pledged to spare no effort to free the more than 200 hostages, including Americans and other foreigners, held by Hamas.

“This is the second stage of the war whose goals are clear – to destroy Hamas’ governing and military capabilities and to bring the hostages home,” Netanyahu told reporters.

“We are only at the start,” he said. “We will destroy the enemy above ground and below ground.”

Israel has tightened its blockade and bombarded Gaza for three weeks since the Islamist group Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 attack. At least 1,400 Israelis were killed in the deadliest day of the nation’s 75-year history, Israeli authorities said.

Western countries have generally backed what they say is Israel’s right to self-defence. But there has been a mounting international outcry over the toll from the bombing and growing calls for a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid to reach Gaza civilians and ease the humanitarian crisis.

Medical authorities in the Gaza Strip, which has a population of 2.3 million people, say 7,650 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s campaign to obliterate the Iran-backed militants.

President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority governs parts of the occupied West Bank while Hamas rules Gaza, said, “Our people in the Gaza Strip are facing a war of genocide and massacres committed by the Israeli occupation forces in full view of the entire world.”

With many buildings reduced to rubble and shelter hard to find, Gazans are short of food, water, fuel and medicines. Their plight got worse from Friday night when phone and internet services were cut – followed by heavy bombing through the night. The communications outage persisted into Sunday.

“God help anyone under the rubble,” said one Gaza journalist, who spent a terrifying night in a building stairway as bombs fell and Israeli forces appeared to exchange fire with Palestinian fighters.

Israel’s chief military spokesperson declined to say whether Israel was behind the telecommunications blackout in Gaza but said it would do what it needed to protect its forces.

Targeting Maze Of Hamas Tunnels

Israel sent troops and tanks into Gaza on Friday night, focusing on infrastructure including the extensive tunnel network built by Hamas, the Israeli military said. It provided no details on the size of the deployment.

Netanyahu on Saturday reiterated Israel’s call for Palestinian civilians to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip where Israel was focusing its attack on what it was were Hamas hideouts and other installations.

But Palestinians say nowhere is safe, with bombs also smashing homes in the south of the densely populated territory.

“A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in front of our eyes,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. The U.N. Security Council plans to meet on Monday on the Israel-Gaza crisis, diplomats said.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk offered his SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network to support communications in Gaza for “internationally recognised aid organisations.” Israel responded that it would fight the move, saying Hamas would “use it for terrorist activities.”

Netanyahu, who met with hostages’ families on Saturday, said contacts to secure their release would continue even during a ground offensive and that military pressure on Hamas could help bring them home. He did not elaborate.

Qatar-mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas continued but at a much slower pace than before Friday’s escalation in Gaza, a source briefed on the talks said.

Hamas’ armed wing said its fighters battled Israeli troops in northeastern and central Gaza. “Al-Qassam Brigades and all Palestinian resistance forces are fully prepared to confront the aggression with full force and thwart the incursions,” it said.

The United States and other Western countries had urged Israel to hold off on launching a major ground offensive for fear of high Palestinian casualties and a widening conflict, as well as to give more time for hostage negotiations. But U.S. officials said it was up to Israel to make its own decisions.

Amid fears that the Israel-Hamas war could spiral into a regional conflict, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters Israel had no interest in expanding the fighting beyond Gaza but is prepared on all fronts.

The crisis brought hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators out in cities around Europe, the Middle East and Asia on Saturday.

India’s abstention from voting on a United Nations resolution calling for a truce in Gaza is “shocking” and shows that the country is shaping its foreign policy as “a subordinate ally of US imperialism”, the CPI and the CPI(M) said in a joint statement on Saturday.

In a separate statement, the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) also condemned the stand taken by India in the matter.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) will also stage a protest at its A K G Bhavan office in Delhi on Sunday to express solidarity with Palestine.

In the joint statement titled “Stop this Genocidal Aggression in Gaza”, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and his CPI counterpart, D Raja, said India’s move negates its longstanding support to the Palestinian cause.

“It is shocking that India abstained on a resolution overwhelmingly adopted by the UN General Assembly calling for a humanitarian truce titled ‘Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations’ in the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza,” they said.

“India’s abstention on a resolution that was overwhelmingly adopted shows the extent to which Indian foreign policy is being shaped by being a subordinate ally of US imperialism and the (Narendra) Modi government’s actions for consolidating the US-Israel-India nexus. This negates India’s longstanding support to the Palestinian cause,” they said.

The two Left parties said as the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the resolution, Israel stepped up its “genocidal air and ground attacks in the Gaza strip”.

It also cut off all communications in Gaza, which is home to around 2.2 million (22 lakh) Palestinians, they said and called for an immediate ceasefire.

“Respecting the overwhelming mandate of the UN General Assembly that there must be an immediate ceasefire. The United Nations must re-energise itself to implement the mandate of the Security Council for a two-State solution with pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine,” the parties said.

In its statement, the AIFB said: “India’s abstention from supporting the resolution is indicative of deviation from India’s stated policy on Palestine and excessive US servitude.” “Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi openly supported Israeli military operations, which was completely contrary to the positions that India has upheld till yesterday. India’s foreign policy has historically supported the Palestinian cause, which began with India voting against the United Nations resolution to create the state of Israel in 1947,” it said.

The AIFB extended support and solidarity to the people of Palestine and demanded an immediate end to Israel’s military operations that have cost thousands of lives, including those of women and children. They also demanded the release of the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in violation of international norms.

“The Forward Bloc also demands an immediate end to all intrusions by the United States and its allies in the region, making the United Nations irrelevant,” it added.

The CPI-M’s decision to stage the protest on Sunday was taken in an ongoing session of its Central Committee. The three-day meeting that started on Friday is scheduled to conclude on Sunday.

Members of the party’s Central Committee and politburo will take part in the protest.

The 193 members of the UNGA, which met in a resumed 10th Emergency Special Session, voted on the draft resolution submitted by Jordan and co-sponsored by more than 40 countries, including Bangladesh, the Maldives, Pakistan, Russia and South Africa.

The resolution was adopted with 120 countries voting in its favour, 14 against it and 45 abstaining. Besides India, the countries that abstained from voting included Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.