"The battle for Rafah is decisive. It is not only targeting what remains of (Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas) battalions, but also their escape routes and supply lines. This battle, of which you are an integral part, will decide many things in this campaign," Netanyahu said, quoted in a statement from his office, addressing soldiers fighting in Rafah after an aerial reconnaissance flight over the southern Gaza town. The Israeli leader's comments came as the army confirmed that five of its soldiers were killed and seven wounded in the northern Gaza refugee camp of Jabalia after an Israeli tank shell hit the building they were in -- bringing to 278 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip last October, according to military figures. "We are here on a difficult day, a day when we learned of the deaths of five of our fighters. This will not weaken our fighting spirit," Netanyahu said, without referring to the fact that they were killed by "friendly fire" during the ground offensive in Rafah which began on May 6, and reminding them that they are "the generation of victory". In similar terms on Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that Israel would expand its military offensive in Rafah with "additional forces" to weaken Hamas and prevent it from resupplying, and the army is likely to extend in coming days the areas from which it is forcibly evacuating Palestinians in Rafah, from where some 500,000 have already fled, according to the UN. Israel launched a war in the Gaza Strip on October 7 last year to eradicate Hamas after it carried out an unprecedented barrage of rocket attacks on Israeli territory hours earlier, killing more than 1,170 people, most of them civilians. In power in Gaza since 2007 and considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union and Israel, Hamas has also taken more than 250 hostages, of whom 128 remain in captivity and 36 have died, according to the latest figures from the Israeli army. The war, which entered its 223rd day on Thursday and continues to threaten to spread throughout the Middle East, has so far caused at least 35,272 deaths in the Gaza Strip, more than 79,000 injuries and around 10,000 people are missing and presumed buried in the rubble, most of them civilians, according to the latest figures from local authorities. The conflict has also caused almost two million displaced people, plunging the overcrowded and impoverished Palestinian enclave into a serious humanitarian crisis, with more than 1.1 million people in a "catastrophic hunger situation" that is claiming victims -- "the highest number ever recorded" by the UN in food security studies worldwide. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Thursday that it is "almost impossible" to get humanitarian aid and fuel into the Gaza Strip after the closure of the Rafah border crossing on May 6, when Israel began its ground offensive in the area where some 1.4 million Palestinians had taken refuge, many of them several times during the more than seven months of the Israeli war against Hamas. Because of the impossibility of getting humanitarian aid into the territory, "the operational capacity of five field hospitals across the Strip will be significantly reduced in less than 48 hours," the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) warned, fearing their imminent closure and a health collapse. Read Also: Netanyahu accuses Egypt of "holding the population of Gaza hostage" (Portuguese version)