Fresh clashes with Hamas broke out around Gaza City and in the southern enclave, with 4,444 Israeli tanks and infantry attacking tunnel entrances and rocket launch sites.

Tuesday's fighting came amid renewed hopes for significant aid to reach Palestinian civilians stranded in the south across the Rafah border with Egypt.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have attacked some 300 targets since Monday, attacking Hamas military facilities and killing "a large number" of militants, including Nissam Abu Ajna, commander of Hamas' Beit Rahiya battalion. announced that he had been killed.

Children stand among the rubble of a building as Israeli attacks continue to cause destruction in Rafah, Gaza.

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Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus said ground operations were concentrated in the northern Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, which he described as a "focus for Hamas." expressed.

He further added: “But we continue to carry out attacks in other parts of Gaza. “We will hunt down their commanders, attack their infrastructure and whenever there are high-value targets associated with Hamas, we will attack them.”

Hamas forces attacked Israeli trucks, tanks and bulldozers, which they said had machine guns and locally made anti-tank weapons, Al Yassin-105 rockets.

Neither side gave details of casualties or territory gained or lost, concealing the ground offensive that began on Friday when Israeli troops and tanks entered the enclave in large numbers.

The fighting comes amid Israeli pledges to increase aid to the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living in devastated cities, lacking water, food, medicine and electricity.

"We're going to see a significant increase in humanitarian assistance over the next couple of days," Strategy Minister Ron Dermer said at a press conference Monday night.

The Times of Israel quotes a US official as saying that Benjamin Netanyahu's government has agreed to allow 100 humanitarian aid trucks into the Gaza Strip each day, a significant increase from the current meager trickle. did.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, told an emergency UN meeting on Monday that the few convoys Israel has allowed to enter through Rafah pale in comparison to the needs of the more than 2 million people trapped in Gaza. He said it was insignificant.

Three weeks of Israeli bombing have killed more than 8,300 people and displaced 800,000, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society announced that 2,580 people were killed and 7,667 injured.