The US has rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on Monday evening, saying that it would benefit Hamas, as the death toll from relentless and indiscriminate Israeli strikes reached over 5,000.
Israeli warplanes continued airstrikes across the Gaza Strip early Monday, including in areas where Palestinians have been told to seek refuge. Such is the ferocity of the attacks that at least 400 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours, with at least 60 deaths in heavy bombardment overnight.
Israel is widely expected to launch a ground offensive in Gaza. Tanks and troops have been massed at the border, and Israel says it has stepped up airstrikes in order to reduce the risk to troops before it enters into the invasion phase of its war against the besieged enclave.
Fears of a widening war have grown as Israeli warplanes have struck targets in the occupied West Bank , Syria and Lebanon in recent days. It has frequently traded fire with Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, which is armed with tens of thousands of rockets.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told troops in northern Israel on Sunday that if Hezbollah launches a war, "it will make the mistake of its life. We will cripple it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the consequences for it and the Lebanese state will be devastating.”
More than 4,600 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, with almost 2000 of those being children.
Over Saturday and Sunday, a total of 35 trucks entered Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing in the first aid deliveiest into the territory since Israel imposed a complete siege at the start of the war.
In a Sunday phone call, Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden “affirmed that there will now be continued flow of this critical assistance into Gaza,” the White House said in a statement.
Relief workers said far more aid was needed to address the spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where half the territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes. The U.N. humanitarian agency said the 20 trucks that entered Saturday amounted to 3% of an average day’s imports before the war and is a "drop in the ocean" after 17 days of the total siege of the strip.