In light of the European Union's consideration of a proposal for a humanitarian halt, the United States issued a warning on Monday that any Israeli truce in Gaza would be advantageous to Hamas.
A ceasefire would "give Hamas the ability to rest, to refit and to get ready to continue launching terrorist attacks against Israel," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
"You can understand perfectly clearly why that's an intolerable situation for Israel, as it would be an intolerable situation for any country that has suffered such a brutal terrorist attack and continues to see the terrorist threat right on its border," he said.
Miller said that the United States was separately working to ensure a flow of humanitarian relief into Gaza, with a US envoy, David Satterfield, on the ground working "intensively" on aid.
Gaza's health ministry reported on Monday that Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 5,087 Palestinians, including 2,055 children, since October 7. It also noted that 15,273 have been injured.
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.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said earlier Monday that he expected the bloc's leaders to back a call for a pause in fighting to let in aid.
"I believe that the idea of a humanitarian pause to facilitate the arrival of humanitarian aid, which would allow displaced persons to find shelter, is something that the leaders will support," Borrell said after talks with EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
In the past 24 hours, Israel claimed to have carried out more than 300 airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of people, as per Hamas, which controls the embattled Palestinian region.
Israel also claims to have engaged in ground skirmishes with Hamas.
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".
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.
Hamas militants poured into southern Israel from Gaza on October 7, in the worst attack in the country's 75-year history, shooting and stabbing mostly civilians and burning many bodies, according to Israeli officials.
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 jerricans from portable water containers.
US President Joe Biden brokered the aid convoys with Egyptian and Israeli leaders 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 and water desalination plants will stop functioning.
As violence on the Lebanese-Israeli border rises in the wake of the outbreak of the Gaza conflict, a UN body said on Monday that almost 20,000 people have been internally displaced in south Lebanon and other areas since early October.
The International Organisation for Migration said that 19,646 persons have been uprooted inside Lebanon since it started keeping track of migration on October 8, the day following a Hamas militant attack on Israel and an Israeli incursion against Gaza.
According to the report, the majority of individuals moving came from the south of Lebanon, while some people came from other places as well.
Also being evacuated by Israeli authorities are a number of cities and localities in the country's northern region.
The biggest escalation since the two sides engaged in war in 2006 has been the frequent exchange of fire along the border between Israel and Lebanon's heavily armed Hezbollah militia.
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 foe 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.
Biden and several other Western leaders in a joint statement stressed the need "to prevent the conflict from spreading" and to "preserve stability in the Middle East".
Israeli air strikes were reported against two airports in Syria, a mosque 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 Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on ABC news.
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