Thousands break into aid warehouses in Gaza as deaths top 8,000

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Thousands of people broke into aid warehouses in Gaza to take flour and basic hygiene products, a UN agency said Sunday, in a mark of growing desperation three weeks into the war between Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers.

Tanks and infantry pushed into Gaza over the weekend as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a "second stage" in the war, which was ignited by Hamas' brutal October 7 incursion into Israel. Israel also pounded the territory from air, land and sea.

Gaza's Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians has passed 8,000 — mostly women and minors. It's a toll without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the initial Hamas onslaught.

Communications were restored to much of Gaza early Sunday after a bombardment described by residents as the most intense of the war knocked out most contact with the territory late Friday. The besieged enclave's 2.3 million people were largely cut off from the world.

In other developments, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court visited the Rafah border crossing, which is Gaza's only connection to Egypt. During the visit on Saturday, Karim Khan was briefed on the damage caused by Israeli airstrikes to the Palestinian side, according to a senior Egyptian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief media. Khan's office has opened an investigation into potential war crimes by Israel in Gaza in the 2014 war.

The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck over 450 militant targets over the past 24 hours, including Hamas command centres and anti-tank missile launching positions. It said ground forces killed a number of Hamas militants as they exited a tunnel near the Erez crossing, which had been the sole pedestrian passageway into Israel before it was destroyed in the fighting.

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