Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said Monday that more than 5,000 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian enclave since Israel launched its withering bombing campaign more than two weeks ago.
Alarm has surged about the spiralling humanitarian crisis in Gaza amid the war sparked by the October 7 Hamas attack that, Israeli officials say, killed more than 1,400 people who were gunned down, stabbed or burnt by the Islamist militants. Hamas also took more than 200 hostages.
On a day when Israel's army reported more than 300 new strikes within 24 hours, Gaza's health ministry said the death toll had surged above 5,000, more than 2,000 of them children, in figures AFP has not been able to independently verify.
Thousands of buildings have been destroyed and more than one million people displaced in the territory that has been under siege and largely deprived of water, food and other basic supplies.
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, even as UN aid agencies have said far more is needed.
Fighting raged unabated overnight, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed again that Israel would "erase Hamas" and as a full-scale ground invasion loomed.
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 Gaza's north -- and at least 10 others were killed in new strikes early Monday.
The Israeli military said it had hit "over 320 military targets in the Gaza Strip" in the past 24 hours.
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.
- Call for blood donations -
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".
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 puts 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".
Tensions have been inflamed in the occupied West Bank, where 95 Palestinians have been killed in clashes involving Israeli security forces or settlers since fighting began in Gaza, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.
Israel kept evacuating southern communities near Gaza.
Orit Cohen, 29, a native of Sderot, an Israeli town just near Gaza's northern border, told AFP: "I came to pick up my mother who until then refused to leave the city. But the army is bombing right on the other side.
"I was afraid for her and I came to get her out of here."
In Gaza, where thousands have been wounded, the health ministry issued a statement saying "citizens are called upon to immediately go to hospitals and blood bank branches to donate blood".
Alarm has grown about the dire needs of the 2.4 million civilians trapped inside the 40-kilometre (25-mile) long coastal strip that was already blockaded and impoverished before the war.
Children killed in an Israeli air strike in the southern city of Khan Yunis were Monday laid to rest in a makeshift grave, while in Rafah men were filling plastic jerrycans from containers with now scare safe drinking water.
US President Joe Biden brokered the passage of aid convoys with Egyptian and Israeli leaders in talks last week -- but the United Nations estimates Gaza needs about 100 trucks of relief goods every day.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said Sunday's delivery of food, water and medical supplies was "another small glimmer of hope for the millions of people in dire need of humanitarian aid.
"But they need more, much more."
Israel has rejected the entry of fuel into Gaza, fearing Hamas could use it for weapons and explosives.
This has sparked warnings that soon Gaza's ambulances, hospital incubators for infants and water desalination plants will soon stop functioning.
- Hezbollah warning -
Around the world, Israel's friends and foes alike have warned against the Gaza war spilling over into a full-scale regional conflagration.
Israel's arch enemy Iran has repeatedly warned of an escalation, as have its allied armed groups, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has traded cross-border fire with Israel.
Netanyahu warned on Sunday that if Hezbollah were to get more deeply involved, it would be "the mistake of its life".
"We will strike it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the significance for it and the state of Lebanon will be devastating," he said.
Israeli air strikes have been reported against two airports in Syria, a mosque it said were used by "terror operatives" in the West Bank city of Jenin, and Hezbollah "military infrastructure" inside Lebanon.
Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria's government are all backed by Iran, which opposes Israel's existence and has warned the region could spiral "out of control".
Washington said it would not hesitate to act in the event of any "escalation", just hours after the Pentagon moved to step up military readiness in the region.
"If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see, our advice is: don't," US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on ABC News.
Netanyahu on Monday hosted Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the latest Western leader to pay a solidarity visit, and told him that "we have to unite, all together, against Hamas, which is ISIS", a reference to the Islamic State jihadist group.
Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh charged that Israel's planned Gaza invasion would mean "new crimes, atrocities, forced displacement and killing for the sake of killing and revenge".
Palestinian PM says West gives Israel 'licence to kill' in Gaza
Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh on Monday accused Western nations of giving Israel a "licence to kill" in its war against the Gaza Strip's Islamist rulers Hamas.
Israel has been bombing Gaza since Hamas gunmen poured across its border with the Palestinian territory on October 7 and, according to Israeli officials, killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
Gaza's Hamas-controlled health ministry on Monday said more than 5,000 people, also mainly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli bombardment. AFP has been unable to independently verify the tolls.
"What we hear from the mouth of the occupation (Israeli) leaders on preparations for a land invasion means more crimes, atrocities and forced displacement," Shtayyeh told the start of a Palestinian Authority government meeting.
"We condemn the statements that constitute a licence to kill and give Israel political cover to commit massacres and spread destruction in Gaza," he added.
US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other leaders have visited Israel in recent days reaffirming its "right to defend" itself, while calling on the Israeli government to stay within international humanitarian law.
Biden and the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy reaffirmed the stance in a statement released Sunday after video talks.
More than 19,000 displaced in Lebanon: UN agency
More than 19,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon amid an uptick in tensions between Israel and Hezbollah at the country's southern border, figures released Monday by a United Nations agency showed.
"An increase in cross-border incidents" has resulted in the displacement of 19,646 people in Lebanon, "both within the south and elsewhere within the country", said the International Organization for Migration.
"We expect the numbers to rise as the cross-border tensions continue" or if there is an escalation in violence, IOM spokesperson Mohammedali Abunajela told AFP in a statement.
Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.
Israel's retaliatory bombing campaign has killed more than 5,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Iran-backed Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah has launched escalating attacks on Israel, raising fears the group intends open a front from Lebanon in support of ally Hamas.
Israel has carried out cross-border strikes and bombardments on Lebanon, while Palestinian groups have also launched limited infiltration attempts into Israel.
Dozens of communities have been told to evacuate in Israel, while thousands of civilians in Lebanon have fled, many heading to other parts of the south or areas in or outside the capital Beirut.
Lebanon, grappling with political paralysis and a four-year-long economic crisis, has not implemented an evacuation plan, but Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said the country was developing an emergency response "as a precaution".
- 'Fragile health system' -
The IOM's Abunajela said that "amidst a deteriorating economic situation and the significant rise in poverty across all populations in Lebanon, internal displacements may add additional stress to the resources of host communities".
Most of the displaced are currently "sheltered in host and family settings, while there are three designated schools, managed by local authorities that are also used as shelters", Abunajela said.
An AFP correspondent last week saw families taking refuge in public schools converted into shelters in the southern city of Tyre, where authorities said they were looking for a place to open a fourth centre.
At least 40 people have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border, according to an AFP tally -- mostly combatants but also including at least four civilians, one of them Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.
Four people have been killed in Israel, including three soldiers and one civilian.
While the tit-for-tat exchanges have so far been relatively contained, analysts have warned that the chances of Hezbollah scaling up involvement could hinge on any Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
Lebanon's crisis has crippled basic services, from electricity to health care and education.
"The country's health system is facing severe resource shortages, including medicines" and medical personnel, Abunajela said.
"In this context, responding to large-scale displacement and health causalities that might occur... may overwhelm the already fragile health system," he warned.