As Israel steps up its bombing campaign again, all telecommunications have been knocked out in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestine Telecommunications Company, or Paltel.

"We regret to announce that all telecom services in Gaza Strip have been lost due to the cut off of main fiber routes. Gaza is blacked out again," Paltel said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told ABC News this weekend that he predicts the war in its current intensity will last at least another two months.

After that, Gallant thinks Israel will be fighting in Gaza for multiple months doing mop-up operations and "taking out pockets of terrorist resistance."

Gallant said the only way Israel would consider resuming any negotiation talks with Hamas is if "Hamas fulfills the original agreement and returns the 15 women and two children it is still holding" hostage, with no preconditions and nothing in return.

Gallant said he's committed to bringing home the rest of the more than 100 people who remain hostage in Gaza.

He added, "The only way with Hamas is to use force. Eventually they will give you something. … Hamas has two options: to die in the tunnels or on the surface, or surrender with no conditions.”

Gallant said Israel's goals for the war are to kill Hamas’ Gaza leader and Oct. 7 architect Yehye Sinwar, "break [Hamas'] chain of command" and ensure Hamas will “no longer function as a military organization that can launch organized attacks against Israel."

-ABC News' Matt Gutman

Six Palestinian mothers of premature babies evacuated from the Gaza Strip last month were due to leave the war-torn territory on Monday for Egypt, where their young children remain hospitalized, Palestinian authorities said.

The Palestinian border authority published a list of mothers approved to leave Gaza on Monday via the Egptian-controlled Rafah border crossing and asked them to head there.

Last month, 28 babies born prematurely in Gaza City's besieged Al-Shifa Hospital were transported to Egypt after their incubators shut down amid a collapse of medical services during Israel’s bombardment. Five of the mothers traveled with their children to Egypt, but Egyptian officials said at the time that the status and whereabouts of the other parents were not known.

-ABC News' Ayat Al-Tawy and Morgan Winsor

Journalists on the ground in southern Israel witnessed an incredibly heavy and constant barrage of artillery fire and airstrikes in the neighboring Gaza Strip on Monday afternoon.

From their position in the southwestern Israeli city of Sderot, which overlooks Gaza, the ABC News team could feel nearby residential buildings shake when the heaviest strikes occurred. Loud bangs were also heard overhead as a barrage of militant rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel and intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system.

Other journalists who have been living in Sderot since the war began almost two months ago told ABC News that the Israeli bombardment in Gaza on Monday was one of the heaviest they have heard or seen there thus far. Monday's strikes were far more intense than at the same time on Sunday and Saturday.

The heavy bombardment coincides with the Israeli military's announcement that its ground forces are now operating in all areas of Gaza and that it is "pursuing Hamas," the Palestinian militant group that rules the strip, in both the north and south.

-ABC News' Tom Soufi Burridge

"Civil order is breaking down in Gaza" and "society is on the brink of full-blown collapse," warned Thomas White, director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza.

"The streets feel wild, particularly after dark," White wrote Friday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

He said some aid convoys have been looted and some U.N. vehicles were stoned.

With Gaza under "constant bombardment" and food and supplies limited, the "UNRWA’s ability to assist and protect people is reducing fast," Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UNRWA, said in a letter to the president of the U.N. General Assembly.

“In my 35 years of work in complex emergencies, I would never have expected to write such a letter, predicting the killing of my staff and the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfill," Lazzarini said. "I urge all member states to take immediate actions to implement an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, enforce international law including the protection of civilians, U.N. staff, U.N. premises including shelters, medical facilities and all civilian infrastructure and protect the prospects for a political solution vital to peace and stability and the rights for Palestinians, Israelis, the region and beyond."