Is­raeli troops and tanks launched an hours-long ground raid in­to north­ern Gaza overnight in­to Thurs­day, the mil­i­tary said, strik­ing sev­er­al mil­i­tant tar­gets in or­der to “pre­pare the bat­tle­field” be­fore a wide­ly ex­pect­ed ground in­va­sion af­ter more than two weeks of dev­as­tat­ing airstrikes.

The raid came af­ter the U.N. warned that’s it’s on the verge of run­ning out of fu­el in the Gaza Strip, forc­ing it to sharply cur­tail re­lief ef­forts in the ter­ri­to­ry, which has al­so been un­der a com­plete siege since Hamas’ bloody ram­page across south­ern Is­rael ig­nit­ed the war ear­li­er this month.

The ris­ing death toll in Gaza, which soared past 7,000 on Thurs­day, ac­cord­ing to Pales­tin­ian of­fi­cials, is un­prece­dent­ed in the decades-long Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. Even greater loss of life could come if Is­rael launch­es an ex­pect­ed ground of­fen­sive aimed at crush­ing Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and sur­vived four pre­vi­ous wars with Is­rael.

The Health Min­istry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Wednes­day that more than 750 peo­ple were killed over the past 24 hours, high­er than the 704 killed the pre­vi­ous day. The As­so­ci­at­ed Press couldn’t in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the death toll, and the min­istry doesn’t dis­tin­guish be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants.

On Wednes­day, the wife, son, daugh­ter and grand­son of Wael Dah­douh, a vet­er­an Al-Jazeera cor­re­spon­dent in Gaza, were killed in an Is­raeli strike. The Qatar-based net­work showed footage of his grief up­on en­ter­ing a hos­pi­tal and see­ing his dead son. Dah­douh and oth­er mourn­ers at­tend­ed the fu­ner­als on Thurs­day wear­ing the blue flak jack­ets used by re­porters in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary says it on­ly strikes mil­i­tant tar­gets and ac­cus­es Hamas of op­er­at­ing among civil­ians in dense­ly-pop­u­lat­ed Gaza. Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants have fired rock­et bar­rages in­to Is­rael since the war be­gan.

Is­rael has vowed to crush Hamas’ ca­pac­i­ty to gov­ern Gaza or threat­en it again, while al­so say­ing it doesn’t want to re­oc­cu­py the ter­ri­to­ry from which it with­drew sol­diers and set­tlers in 2005. That could prove a daunt­ing chal­lenge, since Hamas is deeply root­ed in Pales­tin­ian so­ci­ety, with po­lit­i­cal and char­i­ty or­ga­ni­za­tions as well as a for­mi­da­ble armed wing.

Ben­ny Gantz, a re­tired gen­er­al and a mem­ber of Is­rael’s war Cab­i­net, said any pos­si­ble ground of­fen­sive would be on­ly “one stage in a long-term process that in­cludes se­cu­ri­ty, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial as­pects that will take years.”

“The cam­paign will soon ramp up with greater force,” he added.

Dur­ing the overnight raid, sol­diers killed fight­ers and de­stroyed mil­i­tant in­fra­struc­ture and an­ti-tank mis­sile launch­ing po­si­tions, the mil­i­tary said. It said that no Is­raelis were wound­ed. There was no im­me­di­ate con­fir­ma­tion of any Pales­tin­ian ca­su­al­ties.

Is­rael al­so said it had al­so car­ried out around 250 airstrikes across Gaza in the last 24 hours, tar­get­ing tun­nel shafts, rock­et launch­ers and oth­er mil­i­tant in­fra­struc­ture.

The Gaza Health Min­istry says more than 7,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in the war — a fig­ure that in­cludes the dis­put­ed toll from an ex­plo­sion at a hos­pi­tal. That is more than three times the num­ber of Pales­tini­ans killed in the six-week-long Gaza war in 2014. The min­istry’s toll in­cludes more than 2,900 mi­nors and more than 1,500 women.

The fight­ing has killed more than 1,400 peo­ple in Is­rael, most­ly civil­ians slain dur­ing the ini­tial Hamas at­tack, ac­cord­ing to the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment. Hamas al­so holds at least 224 hostages in Gaza.

The warn­ing by the U.N. agency for Pales­tin­ian refugees, UN­R­WA, over de­plet­ing fu­el sup­plies raised alarm that the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis could quick­ly wors­en.

Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion has al­so been run­ning out of food, wa­ter and med­i­cine. About 1.4 mil­lion of Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion res­i­dents have fled their homes, with near­ly half of them crowd­ed in­to U.N. shel­ters. Hun­dreds of thou­sands re­main in north­ern Gaza, de­spite Is­rael or­der­ing them to evac­u­ate to the south, say­ing those who re­main might be con­sid­ered “ac­com­plices” of Hamas.

In re­cent days, Is­rael has let more than 60 trucks with aid en­ter from Egypt, which aid work­ers say is in­suf­fi­cient and on­ly a tiny frac­tion of what was be­ing brought in be­fore the war. Is­rael is still bar­ring de­liv­er­ies of fu­el — need­ed to pow­er gen­er­a­tors — say­ing it be­lieves that Hamas will take it.

“This is a small amount of what is re­quired, a drop in the ocean,” said William Schom­burg, head of the sub-del­e­ga­tion in Gaza. “We are try­ing to es­tab­lish a pipeline.”

UN­R­WA has been shar­ing its own fu­el sup­plies so that trucks can dis­trib­ute aid, bak­eries can feed peo­ple in shel­ters, wa­ter can be de­sali­nat­ed, and hos­pi­tals can keep in­cu­ba­tors, life sup­port ma­chines and oth­er vi­tal equip­ment work­ing. If it con­tin­ues do­ing all of that, fu­el will run out by Thurs­day, so the agency is de­cid­ing how to ra­tion its sup­ply, UN­R­WA spokes­woman Tama­ra Al­ri­fai told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

“Do we give (it) for the in­cu­ba­tors or the bak­eries?” she said. “It is an ex­cru­ci­at­ing de­ci­sion.”

More than half of Gaza’s pri­ma­ry health care fa­cil­i­ties and rough­ly a third of its hos­pi­tals have stopped func­tion­ing, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said.

At Gaza City’s al-Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal, the lack of med­i­cine and clean wa­ter have led to “alarm­ing” in­fec­tion rates, the group Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders said. Am­pu­ta­tions are of­ten re­quired to pre­vent in­fec­tion from spread­ing in the wound­ed, it said.

One sur­geon with the group de­scribed am­pu­tat­ing half the foot of a 9-year-old boy with on­ly “slight se­da­tion” on a hall­way floor as his moth­er and sis­ter watched.

The con­flict has al­so threat­ened to spread across the re­gion. The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said Wednes­day it struck mil­i­tary sites in Syr­ia in re­sponse to rock­et launch­es from the coun­try. Syr­i­an state me­dia said that eight sol­diers were killed and sev­en oth­ers were wound­ed.

Is­rael has al­so been ex­chang­ing near dai­ly fire with Iran­ian-backed Hezbol­lah across the Lebanese bor­der.

Is­raeli airstrikes and drone at­tacks ear­ly Thurs­day caused fires in open land in the south­ern Lebanon bor­der town of Ai­ta al Shaab, where clash­es have in­ten­si­fied, Lebanon’s state-run news agency said. It re­port­ed strikes late Wednes­day on towns in the Tyre dis­trict, say­ing a mat­tress fac­to­ry was hit.

Hamas’ sur­prise at­tack on Oct. 7 in south­ern Is­rael stunned the coun­try with its bru­tal­i­ty, its un­prece­dent­ed toll and the fail­ure of in­tel­li­gence agen­cies to know it was com­ing. Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said in a speech Wednes­day night that he will be held ac­count­able, but on­ly af­ter Hamas was de­feat­ed.

“We will get to the bot­tom of what hap­pened,” he said. “This de­ba­cle will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Every­one will have to give an­swers, in­clud­ing me.”

Chehayeb re­port­ed from Beirut and Teibel from Jerusalem. Wafaa Shu­rafa in Deir al-Bal­ah, Gaza Strip, and Samy Magdy in Cairo, con­tributed to this re­port.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) —