GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories, Dec 4, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Israel expanded

its offensive against Hamas militants in besieged Gaza on Monday, as
international concern deepened over the mounting civilian death toll in a war
sparked by the October 7 attacks.

The return to open warfare after a truce between Israel and Hamas broke down
has had ripple effects around a region on the cusp of a wider conflagration.

Since the expiry of the truce on Friday, fighting in Gaza has resumed between
Hamas and advancing Israeli troops, as have militants' rocket launches toward
Israel and Israel's air strikes on the Palestinian territory.

Over the weekend, Israeli air strikes on northern Gaza threw thick clouds of
smoke and dust into the sky.

On Sunday, the Israeli army reported a string of rocket salvos from Gaza into
Israel, adding that most had been intercepted.

The Hamas-run government in Gaza and the official Palestinian news agency
Wafa said a strike had hit the entrance of the Kamal Adwan hospital in the
north of the territory late Sunday.

Several people were killed in the strike, the news agency said, while Hamas
accused Israel on Telegram of a "grave violation" of humanitarian law.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the
alleged strike.

Israel says Hamas uses hospitals and other civilian infrastructure for
military purposes -- an accusation that the militant group denies.

"The IDF continues to expand its ground operation against main Hamas fronts
in the Gaza Strip," Israel military spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Sunday.

"Wherever there is a Hamas stronghold, the IDF operates," he said, referring
to the Israel Defense Forces.

- 'Impasse in negotiations' -

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas in retaliation for the militant group's
October 7 attacks that killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians,
according to Israeli authorities.

An estimated 240 others, among them young children and elderly people, were
taken hostage into Gaza during the attacks.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 15,500 people have been
killed in the territory since October 7, more than half of them women and
children.

Under a truce mediated by Qatar with support from Egypt and the United
States, 80 Israeli hostages were freed, in exchange for the release of 240
Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

More than two dozen other captives were also freed from Gaza.

However, fighting resumed between the two sides on Friday despite
international calls for an extension.

The next day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Israeli
negotiators were being withdrawn from Qatar "following the impasse in the
negotiations" aimed at renewing the truce.
With 137 hostages still held in Gaza, according to the Israeli military,
Hamas has ruled out more releases until a permanent ceasefire is agreed.

On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had carried out around 10,000 air
strikes since the war started.

Israel says five of its soldiers have died in combat since the end of the
truce, three of them on Sunday.

"In the past few hours, only 316 dead and 664 injured people have been
rescued from the rubble and taken to hospital, but many others are still
stuck under the rubble," Hamas's health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra
said in a statement.

The mounting death toll in Gaza has sparked growing international concern
over Israel's conduct of the war to eradicate Hamas.

On Sunday, hospitals in southern Gaza were overflowing with dead and wounded,
some crying out in pain.

"I am running out of ways to describe the horrors hitting children here,"
James Elder, a spokesman for the United Nations children's agency UNICEF,
said in a video from Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis.

"This is the worst bombardment of the war right now in south Gaza. I am
seeing massive child casualties," he said in the video, posted on X, formerly
Twitter.

Nine-year-old Huda, who was wounded in the head, arrived at the Deir al-Balah
hospital with an International Committee of the Red Cross convoy bringing
casualties from northern Gaza.

"She doesn't answer me any more," her father Abdelkarim Abu Warda said,
sobbing.

- Red Sea drones -

Israel's ally the United States, which provides it with billions of dollars
in military aid annually, has intensified calls for the protection of Gaza's
civilians.

"Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed," Vice President Kamala
Harris told reporters at UN climate talks in Dubai.

A White House official said Sunday the United States believes Israel is
"making an effort" to minimise civilian casualties in Gaza.

Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said that the blame for the deaths
lay with Hamas and those killed "would still be alive" had the group not
carried out the October 7 attacks.

With the focus of the war on Gaza, the West Bank has also seen an uptick in
violence since October.

According to Wafa, Israeli troops conducted on Monday a raid into the
occupied West Bank city of Jenin and neighbouring villages, with clashes
erupting as the soldiers went in.

With fears of a wider regional conflagration rising, a US destroyer shot down
multiple drones over the Red Sea while assisting commercial ships in the Red
Sea on Sunday, according to the US Central Command.

Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels -- who said they targeted two of the ships -
- launched a series of drones and missiles towards Israel in recent weeks and
seized a cargo vessel last month, but the latest attacks mark a significant
escalation in the threat to shipping in the area.

In Iraq, an air strike killed at least five pro-Iranian militants on Sunday,
according to Iraqi security sources, a day after Baghdad warned Washington
against "attacks" on its territory.

Fighting also flared on Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

The Israeli army said it had launched artillery strikes in response to cross-
border fire, and its fighter jets hit a number of targets linked to Lebanese
militant group Hezbollah.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said it had launched several attacks on Israeli
positions, including a missile strike on a military vehicle.