Gaza City, Gaza - Israel said Monday it had launched more than 300 strikes on the Gaza Strip within 24 hours as Palestinians reported the heaviest night of bombing since the war triggered by the October 7 Hamas attack.

More than two weeks into Israel's response to the 1,400 killed in the assault, alarm has surged about the spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

More than 5,000 have been killed in Gaza, around 40% of them children, according to local authorities. Thousands of buildings have been destroyed and more than one million people displaced.

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.

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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."

The US, which says it 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.

This has sparked warnings that soon Gaza's ambulances, hospital incubators and water desalination plants will stop functioning.

Bombing raged unabated overnight, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed again that Israel would "erase Hamas" and as a full-scale ground invasion looms.

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 by Israeli security forces or settlers since fighting began in Gaza, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.

Israel kept evacuating southern communities near Gaza.

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".

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"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."