Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Wednesday a significant escalation of Israel's renewed offensive in Gaza to capture "large areas," creating security buffers between the Palestinian enclave and Israel.

Israel’s war 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.

The bodies of more than a dozen aid workers have been recovered in southern Gaza from what a United Nations agency described as a “mass grave,” a week after they went missing following attacks by Israeli forces.

The Palestinian Red Crescent says the slain workers and their vehicles were clearly marked as medical and humanitarian personnel and accused Israeli troops of killing them “in cold blood.”

At least 73 people were killed during Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip over the course of Wednesday, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority. The figures do not distinguish between civilians or combatants and cannot be independently verified.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had seized a corridor of land would could split one of Gaza’s largest city’s from the rest of the enclave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday that Israel is establishing a new security corridor across Gaza as the country said it planned to seize large areas of the Palestinian territory and launched a wave of strikes that Palestinian health officials said killed more than 40 people.