Israel on Monday said it has launched over 300 strikes on the Gaza Strip within 24 hours.
The Hamas rulers of the besieged Palestinian territory state that the attack has left dozens killed.
More than two weeks into the war triggered by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,400, alarm has surged about the spiralling humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The Hamas-run health ministry also disclosed that more than 4,650 have been killed in Gaza, around 40 percent of them children, adding that thousands of buildings have been destroyed and more than one million people are displaced
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About a dozen trucks carrying desperately needed aid, the third convoy in three days arrived inside Gaza from Egypt on Monday, through Rafah, Gaza’s only crossing not controlled by Israel.
The United States, which has brokered the entry of the aid convoys, has vowed a “continued flow” of relief goods into Gaza, where Israel has cut off most water as well as food, power and fuel.
Fighting raged unabated overnight after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed again that Israel would “erase Hamas” and as a full-scale ground invasion looms.
Gaza’s Hamas-controlled government media office said that “more than 60 were martyred in the raids” during the night, including 17 in a single strike that hit a house in northern Gaza and at least 10 others were killed in new strikes on Monday morning.
The Israeli military said it had hit “over 320 military targets in the Gaza Strip” in the 24 hours up to Monday morning.
It said the targets “included tunnels containing Hamas terrorists, dozens of operational command centres” as well as “military compounds and observation posts” used by Islamic Jihad, another militant group.
Rafah resident Mohammed Abu Sabalah said he had returned home from the local mosque after dawn prayers Monday and that “a quarter of an hour later there was a bombing”.
“We couldn’t see anything because of the thick smoke,” he said, adding that “we thank God that we’ve emerged safe and sound” with “only a few windows and doors destroyed” in his house.
Israeli forces are massed near the Gaza border, and smaller units have already carried out limited incursions, targeting Hamas and hoping to rescue hostages, whose number Israel now estimates at 222.
In one such operation, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded, the army said, adding that the tank operation had aimed “to dismantle terror infrastructure… and locate missing persons and bodies”.
