Israel is starting its payback of Hamas, adviser to Israel’s prime minister says

Palestinian militant group Hamas will pay for its crimes against humanity and Israel is starting its payback, Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC in an interview on Friday.

Israeli air and ground forces are stepping up operations in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s chief military spokesperson said on Friday, amid reports of heavy bombing of the besieged enclave, where internet and mobile phone services were cut off.

Israeli forces have massed outside Gaza, where Israel has been conducting an intense campaign of aerial bombardment since a deadly October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The Hamas government said Israel cut communications and most of the internet” across the Gaza Strip on Friday.

The government’s media office accused Israel of taking the measure “to perpetrate massacres with bloody retaliatory strikes from the air, land and sea.”