said that it was expanding its ground operations there. 0ur middle east correpondent tom bateman, who is in jerusalem, has more. well, there has been intensive aerial bombardment by the israelis over a prolonged period of time, the heaviest that we ve seen at night time during the course of this conflict. and we heard from daniel hagari, the israeli military spokesman, in a live televised address to israelis, that he said that they were widening their ground operations. he talked about this being what he called a very significant attack against underground networks of hamas, he said, and also terrorist infrastructure, as he described it. now, one of the first signs that something significant was taking place here was that all communications for ordinary palestinians in gaza went dark. there was a complete blackout. and remember, this is on top of more than two weeks of a complete cut of the electricity grid in gaza. now, i mean, i had tried for hours to reach people in gaza.