Israeli military issues thousands of call-up notices, local media report

TEL AVIV (Reuters) -The Israeli military was issuing call-up notices to thousands of reservists on Saturday to support an expansion of its offensive in Gaza, Israeli media reported, after the prime minister announced that his upcoming visit to Azerbaijan was postponed.

The reservists will be deployed to Israel's border with Lebanon and in the occupied West Bank, replacing regular soldiers who will lead a new offensive in Gaza, the news site Ynet reported.

The military had no immediate comment.

Earlier, the prime minister's office announced that Benjamin Netanyahu was rescheduling his May 7-11 visit to Azerbaijan, citing recent developments in Gaza and Syria.

The office, which also cited "the intense diplomatic and security schedule", did not announce a new date for the visit. Netanyahu had been expected to meet with President Ilham Aliyev.

Israeli media reported on Friday that the security cabinet had approved plans for an expanded operation in the Gaza Strip.

Israel broke a fragile ceasefire with Hamas in March after seeking to extend it without engaging in talks to permanently end the war. Hamas says it would release the remaining hostages in Gaza only in exchange for an end to the war.

The military has since intensified its bombing campaign and carved out wide buffer zones in Gaza, squeezing the 2.3 million population into an ever narrower zone in the centre of the enclave and along the coast and shutting off aid supplies.

Israel's leadership has asserted that it is committed to its war goals of defeating Hamas and bringing back the last 59 hostages held in Gaza.

So far, 192 hostages have been released through negotiations and Israeli military operations since November 2023. Most had been abducted on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's retaliatory war has reduced much of the territory to rubble and killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, according to health officials in Gaza.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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