Gaza death toll exceeds grim 10,000 mark as Israeli onslaught continues

The death toll in Gaza has now exceeded 10,000 after nearly one month of Israeli bombardment, the Palestinian Health Ministry said as the offensive against the Palestinians showed signs of intensifying.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed no letup despite mounting international calls for a ceasefire.

Hundreds of overnight strikes pushed the death toll to 10,022, mostly women and children, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry told a press conference on Monday afternoon.

The toll included 4,104 children and 2,641 women, the ministry said.

Ground forces with tanks have flooded the northern half of Gaza and tightened an encirclement of Gaza City, effectively splitting the territory in two, even as hundreds of thousands of civilians remained in the north despite Israeli expulsion orders.

Gaza-based Health Ministry said more than 200 people had been killed in overnight strikes.

"These are massacres! They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants — women and children," one resident, Mahmoud Mechmech, told AFP in Deir al Balah in central Gaza.

"We have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble," he said as crowds prayed around corpses wrapped in white shrouds outside a nearby hospital.

Israel's ally the United States has sent its top diplomat Antony Blinken on a whirlwind Middle East tour that has been marked by strong condemnation of Israel, including on his latest stop in Türkiye.

The Israeli army said on Monday it had pounded Gaza with "significant" new strikes on 450 targets, having earlier said it had already hit over 12,000.

"We will take the fight to Hamas wherever they are — underground, above ground," Israeli army spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said, repeating calls for civilians to leave the urban war zone.

"We will be able to dismantle Hamas, stronghold after stronghold, battalion after battalion, until we achieve the ultimate goal, which is to rid the Gaza of Hamas" Israeli army spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said.

Calls for ceasefire

The heads of major United Nations agencies issued a joint statement calling for a ceasefire inside the territory of 2.4 million people where an Israeli siege has cut off most water, food and fuel supplies.

"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 spiralling numbers of lives lost and torn apart," said the statement.

"We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It's been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now."

Israeli troops and Hamas fighters have engaged in fierce house-to-house combat in densely populated Gaza, where the war has sent 1.5 million people fleeing to other parts of the territory.

Netanyahu has remained firm on his position, vowing on Sunday that "there won't be a ceasefire until the hostages are returned".

Shortly before the latest barrage of strikes, internet and telephone lines were cut, the army said.

Israel has distributed leaflets and sent text messages ordering Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to head south, but a US official said on Saturday at least 350,000 civilians remained in the worst-hit areas.

Blinken, on his regional tour — which has taken him to Israel, Jordan, the occupied West Bank of Palestine, the Greek Cypriot Administration and Iraq — has called for "humanitarian pauses" while rejecting many countries from the Muslim world and Global South and some Western states' demands for a ceasefire.