Israel intensifies strikes despite UN agencies' calls for cease-fire

GAZA/JERUSALEM — Israel pounded Gaza with "significant "strikes on Monday as soldiers battled Hamas forces in the besieged territory, ignoring cease-fire calls by UN aid agencies who condemned surging civilian deaths in the monthlong conflict.

Israeli troops and Hamas fighters engaged in house-to-house combat in densely populated Gaza, where the conflict has sent 1.5 million people fleeing to other parts of the territory in a desperate search for cover.

"We will take the fight to Hamas wherever they are, underground, above ground," Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said at a briefing on Monday, repeating calls for civilians to leave the urban conflict zone in the north of the Gaza Strip.

"This strike is like an earthquake," Gaza City resident Alaa Abu Hasera said, in a devastated area where entire blocks were reduced to rubble.

Israel launched a massive bombing campaign after the Hamas militants staged the surprise attack on Oct 7.

The health ministry in Gaza said more than 10,000 people, many of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli strikes and the intensifying ground campaign since the conflict began. More than 1,400 Israelis were killed, media reported.

Israeli troops now encircle Gaza City, effectively splitting the territory in two, with "significant" strikes carried out, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said late on Sunday.

Shortly before the strikes, internet and telephone lines were cut, Hagari said, adding that the strikes would continue in the days to come.

On Sunday, the health ministry said 45 people were killed in Israeli strikes on a refugee camp in central Gaza, leaving people searching through the rubble.

"Are there any survivors?" shouted Said al-Najma, as he tried to shift the blocks of concrete strewed across the road in the camp.

"They brought down an entire street on the heads of women and children without any notice," he said.

Deepening the desperation in the territory, the sole border crossing into Egypt was closed on Sunday for a second day in a row, with Hamas suspending the evacuation of foreign passport holders after Israel refused to allow some wounded Palestinians to be evacuated.

Mounting casualties

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed the closure, saying more than 1,100 people had been allowed out in the last two days.

As international concern grows over mounting casualties, the heads of all major UN agencies issued a joint statement expressing outrage at the civilian death toll in Gaza and calling for an "immediate humanitarian cease-fire".

"For almost a month, the world has been watching the unfolding situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory in shock and horror at the spiraling numbers of lives lost and torn apart," the UN chiefs said, including the heads of UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

The statement came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed a whirlwind tour in the Middle East, including Israel and the West Bank, as well as Jordan, Iraq and Cyprus. Blinken on Monday wrapped up the tour in the region after discussing the situation in Gaza with Turkiye's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

A Jordanian Royal Air Force aircraft on Monday airdropped urgent medical supplies to the Jordanian field hospital in the Gaza Strip, reported Jordan's state-run Petra News Agency.

Meanwhile, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu was suspended from government meetings "until further notice", Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Sunday, after Eliyahu suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

Asked in a radio interview about a hypothetical nuclear option, Eliyahu replied: "That's one way."

His remark drew swift condemnation from around the Arab world.

Agencies - Xinhua