The Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday that it has escalated air strikes on Gaza, as bombings could be seen from the Israel-Gaza border.
The IDF said early Tuesday it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day. The IDF also confirmed that it made targeted commando raids inside Gaza.
Those raids have been seen as not only aimed at military targets but as reconnaissance missions to locate some of the 220 people believed to be held hostage by Hamas.
The Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 704 people over the past day, mostly women and children. The Associated Press could not independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies figures from hospital directors.
Monday night, Hamas released two elderly female hostages. Hamas says they did it for humanitarian reasons, but the women's husbands, who were also taken hostage during the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, are still being held by Hamas.
"They attacked our houses," Yocheved Lifshitz, one of the freed hostages, said. "They killed and kidnapped both old and young with no distinction."
The 85-year-old added that the entire experience was unimaginable.
"I went through a nightmare we couldn't have imagined," she said. "I constantly have the images of what happened repeating in my mind."
Lifshitz said she was thrown into a motorcycle and beaten with a pole on the way to Gaza, adding that she had to walk for two to three hours through a series of tunnels to a large hallway, where she was kept with 25 other hostages. Each hostage had a guard, Lifshitz said.
It's unknown whether any of those hostages are American. U.S. officials say 10 Americans are still unaccounted for.
The Israeli military dropped leaflets in Gaza asking Palestinians to reveal information on the hostages’ whereabouts. In exchange, the military promised a reward and protection for the informant’s home.
SEE MORE: Parents of missing American Israeli describe texts during attack
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to New York City and appeared at the United Nations with other top diplomats on the situation in the Middle East.
Aside from the violence, there is growing concern about the health of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. A third aid convoy made it into southern Gaza Monday through Egypt. But humanitarian groups say it is nowhere near enough, even before Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza restricting all shipments of food, water and fuel.
While Israel has allowed a small number of trucks filled with aid to enter, it has barred deliveries of fuel to Gaza to keep it out of Hamas' hands. The U.N. said its operation distributing aid will halt Wednesday evening if it does not receive fuel.
As the death toll in Gaza spirals, and fuel supplies dwindle, the number of facilities able to deal with casualties is shrinking. More than half of primary health care facilities, and roughly 1 of every 3 hospitals, have stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said.
Overwhelmed hospital staff struggled to triage cases as constant waves of wounded were brought in. The Health Ministry said many wounded are laid on the ground without even simple medical intervention and others wait for days for surgeries because there are so many critical cases.
To make room for the dead, cemeteries have been forced to excavate and reuse old plots. Families have dug trenches to bury multiple bodies at a time.
"Bodies pour in by the hundreds every day. We use every empty inch in the cemeteries,” said Abdel Rahman Mohamed, a volunteer who helps transfer bodies to Khan Younis’ main cemetery.
Israel says it does not target civilians and that Hamas militants are using them as cover for their attacks. Palestinian militants have fired over 7,000 rockets at Israel since the start of the war, according to Israel, and Hamas said it fired a fresh barrage on Tuesday.
Iranian-backed fighters around the region are warning of possible escalation, including the targeting of U.S. forces deployed in the Mideast, if a ground offensive is launched. Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire almost daily across the Israel-Lebanon border.
Across central and south Gaza, where Israel told civilians to take shelter, there were multiple scenes of rescuers pulling the dead and wounded out of large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings. Graphic photos and video shot by the AP showed rescuers unearthing bodies of children from multiple ruins.
A father knelt on the floor of the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah next to the bodies of three dead children cocooned in bloodied sheets. Later at the nearby morgue, workers prayed over 24 dead wrapped in body bags, several of them the size of small children.
Buildings that collapsed on residents killed dozens at a time in several cases, witnesses said. Two families lost a total 47 members in a leveled home in Rafah, the Health Ministry said.
A strike on a four-story building in Khan Younis killed at least 32 people, including 13 members of the Saqallah family, said Ammar al-Butta, a relative who survived the airstrike. He said there were about 100 people sheltering in the building, including many who had evacuated from Gaza City.
"We thought that our area would be safe," he said.
Another strike destroyed a bustling marketplace in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, witnesses said. AP photos showed the floor of a vegetable shop covered with blood.
In Gaza City, at least 19 people were killed when an airstrike hit the house of the Bahloul family, according to survivors, who said dozens more people remained buried. The legs of a dead woman and another person, both still half buried, dangled out of the wreckage where workers dug through the dirt, concrete and rebar.
The Health Ministry says more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors. The figure includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.
The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government.
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