Over 200 dead in Israeli strikes on Gaza

Intense Israeli strikes killed more than 200 people overnight in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run health ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory said Monday.

"More than 200 martyrs were reported in the overnight massacres," the ministry said in a statement, adding the death toll only covered Gaza City and the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

Additionally, a hospital official said the bodies of 58 people killed in overnight strikes in the centre of the Gaza Strip were taken to the main hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah.

"We have been informed that dozens of other bodies are buried under the rubble," the hospital's director Iyad al-Jabri told AFP.

Israel began pounding Gaza with what it called "significant" strikes on Monday as soldiers battled Hamas forces in the territory, ignoring ceasefire calls by UN aid agencies who condemned surging civilian deaths in the month-long conflict.

Israeli forces have stepped up their offensive in Gaza as part of the military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks which Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 people.

The Palestinian Islamist group's gunmen also seized more than 240 hostages during the attack.

The hospital figures given on Monday are expected to see the war's overall death toll for Gaza issued by the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory surpass 10,000.

On Sunday, the Hamas-controlled health ministry said at least 9,770 people, around two-thirds of them women and children, had been killed in Gaza since the conflict erupted on October 7.