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.

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.

Israeli forces have moved into Rafah, creating a new security zone in Gaza, while simultaneously launching airstrikes in Syria and facing potential confrontation with Turkey over its military presence there,

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Wednesday a major expansion of the military’s operation in Gaza involving the seizure of large areas of land that would be “incorporated into Israel’s security zones.

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.

Aid agencies say the workers were killed and buried in a mass grave in Rafah in southern Gaza. Residents described being shot at along the evacuation route.

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.