JERUSALEM — A strike in Gaza killed several members of a family Friday as Israel ordered ground forces to advance deeper into the territory and vowed to hold more land until Hamas releases its remaining hostages.

The explosion east of Gaza City killed a couple and their two children, plus two additional children who weren’t related to them but were in the same building, according to witnesses and a local hospital. The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the explosion.

The Israeli military said on social media it was planning to conduct raids in three neighborhoods west of Gaza City, and it warned Palestinians to evacuate the area in advance. The warning came shortly after the Israeli military said it intercepted two rockets fired from northern Gaza that set off sirens in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon.

After retaking part of a corridor that divides Gaza’s north from south, Israeli troops moved Thursday toward the northern town of Beit Lahiya and the southern border city of Rafah. The military said it had resumed enforcing a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Friday that Israel would carry out operations in Gaza “with increasing intensity until the hostages are released by Hamas.”

“The more Hamas continues its refusal to release the kidnapped, the more territory it will lose to Israel,” Katz said.

Firing delayed

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was delivered a setback in his attempt to fire the country’s domestic security chief.

Hours after Netanyahu’s Cabinet unanimously approved the firing Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet security service, the Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt to his dismissal until an appeal can be heard no later than April 8. Netanyahu’s office had said Bar’s dismissal was effective April 10, but that it could come earlier if a replacement was found.

Israel’s attorney general has ruled that the Cabinet has no legal basis to dismiss Bar.

A Shin Bet report into Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that prompted the war in Gaza acknowledged failures by the security agency. But it also said policies by Netanyahu’s government created the conditions for the attack.

Netanyahu has resisted calls for an official state commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 attack and has tried to blame the failures on the army and security agencies.

A number of senior security officials, including a defense minister and army chief, have been fired or forced to step down. Bar had been one of the few senior security officials since the Oct. 7 attack to remain in office.

The decision to sack Bar deepens a power struggle focused largely over who bears responsibility for the 2023 Hamas attack. It also could set the stage for a crisis over the country’s division of powers.

Critics say the move is a power grab by the prime minister against an independent-minded civil servant, and tens of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated in support of Bar, including outside Netanyahu’s residence on Friday.

Netanyahu sounded defiant in a social media post Friday evening, saying: “The State of Israel is a state of law and according to the law, the Israeli government decides who will be the head of the Shin Bet.”

Hundreds dead

Nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed since Israel on Tuesday shattered a truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages and brought relative calm since late January.

In the southern city of Rafah, officials said Israeli bombardments had forced residents into the open, deepening their suffering.