Israel says it will intensify attacks on Gaza, where limited aid has finally entered

Strikes continue after Israel said it would increase attacks on Gaza, while the US pledged to boost air defences following attacks on its troops in the region.

Gaza's Health Ministry said Israel's air and missile strikes in retaliation had killed at least 4,385 Palestinians, including hundreds of children. Source: EPA / Mohammed Saber

Israel has pounded southern Gaza with air strikes and says it would intensify its attacks in the enclave's north, as Washington pledged more air defences to the Mideast in response to recent attacks on US troops in the region.

Palestinian media reported at least 11 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, and that Israel was striking the southern city of Rafah.

The strikes early on Sunday came hours after Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari called on Gazans to move south out of harm's way.

Personnel from the Palestine Red Crescent Society unload a truck carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip after it enters from Egypt in Rafah. Source: EPA / Haitham Imad

"For your own safety move southward. We will continue to attack in the area of Gaza City and increase attacks," Hagari told Israeli reporters on Saturday.

Israel started its "total siege" of Gaza after an October 7 cross-border attack on southern Israel by militants of the Islamist movement Hamas killed 1,400 people, mainly civilians, in a shocking rampage that has traumatised Israel.

Gaza's Health Ministry said on Saturday that Israel's air and missile strikes in retaliation had killed at least 4,385 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, with more than a million of the tiny territory's 2.3 million people displaced.

United States boosts defences

The US said it would send more air defence assets, including a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and additional Patriot air defence missile system battalions to the Middle East and would ready more troops.

Drones and rockets targeted two military bases housing US forces in Iraq last week, the latest in a series of attacks after Iraqi militants warned Washington against intervening to support Israel against Hamas in Gaza.

Washington has already sent a significant amount of naval power to the Middle East in recent weeks, including two aircraft carriers, their support ships and about 2000 Marines.

Aid enters Gaza

The first humanitarian aid convoy allowed into the besieged Gaza Strip since war broke out arrived through the Rafah border crossing on Saturday. The United Nations said the 20-truck convoy brought life-saving supplies that would be received by the Palestinian Red Crescent.

But the UN humanitarian office said the volume of goods that entered on Saturday was just 4 per cent of the daily average of imports into Gaza before the hostilities and a fraction of what was needed after 13 days of siege of the crowded enclave.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza Strip enter from Egypt in Rafah. Source: AAP / Haitham Imad/EPA

Biden, long a firm supporter of Israel, cheered the arrival of the aid after days of intense negotiations. He said the United States was committed to ensuring more aid gets to Palestinians running out of food, water, medicines and fuel.

"We will continue to work with all parties," Biden said in a statement.

The United States proposed late on Saturday a draft UN Security Council resolution that says Israel has a right to defend itself. The resolution demands Iran stop exporting arms to "militias and terrorist groups threatening peace and security across the region".

A deadly blast at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza on Tuesday was likely caused by an errant rocket fired from Gaza, not an Israeli strike, Canada's National Department of Defence said, reaching similar conclusions to the US and France.

Most of Gaza's inhabitants depend on humanitarian aid. The heavily urbanised and widely impoverished territory has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the enclave in 2005. Source: ABACA / Middle East Images/ABACA/PA/Alamy

Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the fenced border around the narrow coastal enclave for a planned ground invasion aiming to annihilate Hamas, after several inconclusive wars dating to its seizure of power there in 2007.

Hamas said it fired rockets towards Tel Aviv on Saturday in response to Israeli air strikes that Gaza's Health Ministry and Hamas media said killed at least 50 people and injured dozens.

Israel said its aircraft struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Saturday and that one of its soldiers was hit by an anti-tank missile in cross-border fighting that the Iran-backed group said killed six of its fighters.

Israeli aircraft struck a compound beneath a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank early on Sunday that the military said was being used by militants to organise attacks. Palestinian medics said at least one person was killed.

At least 84 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces since the Hamas rampage, Palestinian officials say.

The significant escalation is the latest boiling point in a long-standing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas is a Palestinian military and political group, gaining power in the Gaza Strip since winning legislative elections there in 2006.

Hamas’s stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state, while refusing to recognise Israel’s right to exist.

Hamas, in its entirety, is designated as a terrorist organisation by countries including Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.

Some countries list only its military wing as a terrorist group.

Other countries voted against a UN resolution condemning Hamas in its entirety, as a terrorist organisation.