Scores of Palestinians were killed in central Gaza on Sunday after Israel stepped up its strikes on the war-torn enclave and another convoy of 17 aid trucks arrived as the Hamas-run territory faces “catastrophic” shortages.

With the violence raging unchecked, Iran said the region could spiral “out of control”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a stark warning to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, saying getting involved would be “the mistake of its life”.

Washington warned any actors looking to inflame the conflict that it would not hesitate to act in the event of any “escalation”.

Hamas militants in Gaza stormed across the border into Israel on October 7, launching a raid that killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death on the first day, according to Israeli officials.

They also seized more than 200 hostages in the worst-ever attack in Israel’s history.

Israel has hit back with a relentless bombing campaign which has so far killed more than 4,600 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Officials said the central town of Deir al-Balah had been particularly badly hit overnight Saturday to Sunday.

The Ministry said at least 80 people had been killed in the overnight raids on central Gaza, which destroyed more than 30 homes.

At the hospital morgue, an AFP journalist saw the bodies of many children on the bloodied floor, where distraught families wept as they identified the victims.

Among them was a man clutching his dead toddler and a young boy who pulled back a blanket over his little sister’s body.

“My cousin was sleeping in his house with his daughter in his arms. He was a man with no record, nothing to do with the resistance,” said Wael Wafi, gazing at the body of his cousin, his arm still wrapped around his three-year-old daughter Misk.

Also Sunday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that 29 of its staff had been killed since the start of the war in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying half of them were teachers. On Saturday it had given a toll of 17.

The scale of the bombing has left basic systems unable to function. The UN saying dozens of unidentified bodies had been buried in a mass grave in Gaza City because cold storage had run out.

Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was killed near the Gaza border by an anti-tank missile fired by militants inside the enclave, the army said.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned the war with Hamas could take months.

“It will take one month, two months, three months, and at the end there will be no more Hamas,” Mr. Gallant said.

A second convoy of 17 trucks of aid entered Gaza from Egypt on Sunday following an initial delivery of 20 trucks on Saturday after intensive negotiations and U.S. pressure.

Separately, an AFP journalist saw six trucks leaving Rafah after filling up from dwindling fuel stocks held at the crossing as the enclave faces catastrophic shortages after Israel cut off supplies of food, water, fuel and electricity.

It later resumed water supplies to the south on October 15.

Although Egyptian media said another 40 trucks would enter Gaza on Monday, the UN says the enclave needs 100 trucks per day to meet the needs of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents.

And so far, there have been no deliveries of fuel, with UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warning Sunday that supplies would run out “in three days”.

“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and.. aid will not reach many civilians in desperate need,” he said.

The Hamas government said 165,000 housing units — half of those in the entire Gaza Strip — had been destroyed in the raids.

With fears growing that the conflict could spread, Israel on Sunday admitted accidentally hitting an Egyptian border post, apologising for the incident which Cairo said had left an unspecified number of border guards with “minor injuries”.

There were fresh exchanges of fire over Israel’s northern border with Lebanon as fears grew that Hezbollah, a close ally of Hamas and Iran, could enter the conflict, prompting Israel’s Netanyahu to warn 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.

Iran also warned about the conflict spreading on Sunday, with top diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian cautioning that if Washington and Israel did not “immediately stop the crime against humanity and genocide in Gaza.. the region will go out of control”.

But Washington said it wouldn’t 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,” U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on ABC News.

On Sunday, Pope Francis used his weekly Angelus prayer in Rome to plead for an end to the bloodshed.

“War is always a defeat, it is a destruction of human fraternity. Brothers, stop!” he said.

He later held a 20-minute conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden about “conflict situations in the world and the need to identify paths to peace”, the Vatican said.

Mr. Biden later discussed with war with the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy, the White House said.

The U.S. President also held talks with Mr. Netanyahu, said the White House, adding: “The leaders affirmed that there will now be continued flow of this critical assistance into Gaza.”

In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced he would be travelling to Israel on Tuesday for talks with Mr. Netanyahu.

Protesters marched in several European capitals on Sunday.

At least 10,000 people rallied in support of Israel in Berlin as Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to stamp out a resurgence of anti-Semitic incidents linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

And thousands gathered in Paris to demand an end to Israel’s operation in Gaza, the first pro-Palestinian rally in the French capital that wasn’t banned on security grounds.

The Israeli military announced it was stepping up its bombardment of Hamas-controlled Gaza Saturday just hours after the first aid trucks arrived from Egypt bringing desperately needed relief to civilians in the war-torn enclave.

The military said it aimed to reduce the risks its troops would face as they enter Gaza in the next phase of the war it launched on Hamas after the militant group carried out the deadliest attack in Israel’s history on October 7.

Hamas militants killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death, and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has retaliated with a relentless bombing campaign that has killed more than 4,300 Palestinians in Gaza, mainly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

An Israeli siege has cut food, water, electricity and fuel supplies to the densely populated territory of 2.4 million people, sparking fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Tens of thousands of Israeli troops have deployed to the Gaza border ahead of an expected ground offensive that officials have pledged will begin “soon”.

“From today, we are increasing the strikes and minimising the danger,” military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari told a press conference Saturday.

“We have to enter the next phase of the war in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us.”

On a visit to a frontline infantry brigade, chief of staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said troops were ready to deal with any surprises Hamas had in store for them when they enter Gaza.

“Gaza is densely populated, the enemy is preparing a lot of things there — but we are also preparing for them,” Mr. Halevi said.

AFP journalists saw 20 trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent pass through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into Gaza on Saturday.

The crossing — the only one into Gaza not controlled by Israel — closed again after the trucks passed.

The lorries had been waiting for days on the Egyptian side after Israel agreed to a request from its main ally the United States to allow aid to enter.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the 20 trucks admitted on Saturday fell far short of the needs of Gazans, more than one million of whom have been forced from their homes.

“Much more” aid needs to be sent, Mr. Guterres told a peace summit in Egypt.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the aid and urged “all parties” to keep the Rafah crossing open.

But a Hamas spokesman said “even dozens” of such convoys could not meet Gaza’s requirements, especially as no fuel was being allowed in to help distribute the supplies to those in need.

In Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hosted a peace summit attended by regional and some Western leaders.

“The time has come for action to end this godawful nightmare,” Mr. Guterres told the summit, calling for a “humanitarian ceasefire”.

Mr. Guterres said “the grievances of the Palestinian people are legitimate and long” after “56 years of occupation with no end in sight”.

But he stressed that “nothing can justify the reprehensible assault by Hamas that terrorised Israeli civilians”.

“Those abhorrent attacks can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” he added.

According to Arab diplomats who spoke with AFP on condition of anonymity, the summit broke up without a joint statement, highlighting the gulf between Arab and Western countries on how best to bring lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Western delegates demanded “a clear condemnation placing responsibility for the escalation on Hamas” but Arab leaders refused, the diplomats said.

Instead, the Egyptian hosts released a statement — drafted with the approval of Arab delegates — criticising world leaders for seeking to “manage the conflict and not end it permanently”.

The statement said such “temporary solutions and palliatives… do not live up to even the lowest aspirations” of the Palestinian people.

Israel bemoaned the lack of a condemnation of the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

“It is unfortunate that even when faced with those horrific atrocities, there were some who had difficulty condemning terrorism or acknowledging the danger,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

A full-blown Israeli ground offensive of Gaza carries many risks, including to the hostages Hamas took and whose fate is shrouded in uncertainty.

So the release of two Americans among the hostages — mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan — offered a rare “sliver of hope”, said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

U.S. President Joe Biden thanked Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political bureau, for its mediation in securing the release.

He said he was working “around the clock” to win the return of other Americans being held.

Natalie Raanan’s half-brother Ben told the BBC he felt an “overwhelming sense of joy” at the release after “the most horrible of ordeals”.

Hamas said Egypt and Qatar had negotiated the release and that it was “working with all mediators to implement the movement’s decision to close the civilian (hostage) file if appropriate security conditions allow”.

Almost half of Gaza’s residents have been displaced, and at least 30% of all housing in the territory has been destroyed or damaged, the United Nations says.

Thousands have taken refuge in a camp set up in the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Fadwa al-Najjar said she and her seven children walked for 10 hours to reach the camp, at some points breaking into a run as missiles struck around them.

“We saw bodies and limbs torn off and we just started praying, thinking we were going to die,” she told AFP.

The United States has moved two aircraft carriers into the eastern Mediterranean to deter Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah, both Hamas allies, amid fears of a wider conflagration.

Exchanges of fire continued across Israel’s border with Lebanon Friday.

Hezbollah reported the loss of four of its fighters while Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad reported one fighter killed.

In Israel, two Thai farm workers were wounded, emergency services said.

Violence has also flared in the West Bank, where 84 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, according to the health ministry.

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to the press onboard of Air Force One en route from Israel, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on October 18, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said Egypt’s president has agreed to open a border crossing into Gaza to allow in 20 trucks with humanitarian aid.

Mr. Biden said he spoke with Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi after his visit to Israel, where leaders there agreed to allow the aid in.

Israel sealed off the Gaza Strip, stopping all entry of food, water, medicine, and fuel to its 2.3 million people following the Hamas attack on October 7.

White House officials said the aid would flow in the coming days. Mr. Biden said if Hamas confiscates the aid, “it will end”.