Israel's war with Hamas appeared set to escalate Saturday as the country's military renewed a warning for civilians in the densely populated northern half of the Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south, "to preserve your safety," ahead of a widely expected ground offensive. Missiles have rained down on the Palestinian territory for a week, since Hamas militants launched a brutal terror attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, firing thousand of rockets and storming into the Jewish state on a murderous rampage.

The combined death toll on both sides of the war climbed over 3,000 on Friday, rising precipitously in Gaza as the Israel Defense Forces hammered the region with missiles that it insists have all targeted Hamas. The warning from Israel has sparked a mass-exodus of civilians heading south through Gaza amid ongoing airstrikes and dire humanitarian circumstances.

Israel's military said Hamas' attack and ongoing rocket fire from Gaza had killed more than 1,300 people and left at least 3,200 wounded as of Friday. At least 27 Americans are known to be among the dead. In Gaza, the Health Ministry said Saturday that the Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 2,215 people, including 724 children, and left more than 8,714 others wounded.

The U.S. government says, meanwhile, that it's working with Israel and Egypt to get the only border crossing out of Gaza not sealed off by Israel — the Rafah crossing into northeast Egypt — opened for a limited time window Friday to enable U.S. nationals to escape the Palestinian territory. The State Department said it was in contact with some of the estimated 500-600 U.S. nationals in the enclave and it urged them to move toward Rafah if they believed they could do so safely.

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