Israel pounded Gaza with "significant" strikes Monday as soldiers battled Hamas forces in the besieged territory, ignoring ceasefire calls by U.N. aid agencies who condemned surging civilian deaths in the month-long conflict.

Israeli troops and Hamas fighters engaged in house-to-house combat in densely populated Gaza, where the war has sent 1.5 million people fleeing to other parts of the territory in a desperate search for cover.

Gaza's Hamas government said the Israeli army carried out "intense bombings" on Sunday evening around several hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, shortly after telecommunications were cut.

"For more than an hour, intense bombings have been taking place around hospitals," said Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas government's media office.

The Israeli army said its land assault on the Gaza Strip had on Sunday split the Palestinian territory in two, with "significant" strikes continuing in its war against Hamas.

Israel’s minister of Jewish heritage, Amihai Eliyahu, said Sunday that dropping an atomic bomb on the Gaza Strip is a possibility. His comments were immediately denounced by other Cabinet members.

Eliyahu, a junior minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau’s Cabinet, made the comment in an interview with Kol Beramah radio. He later tried to walk it back, saying, “Anyone reasonable would understand that the comment was metaphorical. But we definitely need to respond powerfully and disproportionately to terrorism."

U.S. President Joe Biden said that progress had been made on securing a so-called "humanitarian pause" in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, as his secretary of state worked on the same issue in the Middle East.

When asked if any progress had been made on the issue, Biden replied "yes" as he left a church in Delaware and offered a thumbs up before getting into his vehicle. He did not give any further details.

Arab leaders decrying the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Israel-Hamas war pushed for an immediate cease-fire Saturday even as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that such a move would be counterproductive and could encourage more violence by the militant group.

After an afternoon of talks with Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, Qatari and Emirati diplomats and a senior Palestinian official, Blinken stood side by side at a line of podiums with his counterparts from Jordan and Egypt to discuss what he said was their shared desire to protect civilians in Gaza and improve aid flows to the besieged territory.

Thousands of Israelis protested outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in central Jerusalem, calling on the Israeli leader to resign in the wake of the bloody Oct. 7 Hamas rampage that sparked the latest Israel-Hamas war.

Netanyahu has so far refused to take responsibility for the Oct. 7 attack, in which hundreds of Hamas militants burst into Israel and allegedly killed over 1,400 people and took some 240 hostages back to Gaza. He says officials, including himself, will have to give answers to the public, but only after the war.

Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, killing at least 33 people and wounding dozens, health officials said. The strike came as Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory's Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for a pause to get aid to desperate civilians.

The soaring death toll in Gaza has sparked growing international anger, with tens of thousands from Washington to Berlin taking to the streets Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began meetings with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan on Saturday, seeking to mitigate the nearly month-long Gaza war after Israel resisted his calls for a humanitarian pause.

The Israeli army said its ground forces had operated in southern Gaza overnight, after deadly strikes hit an ambulance convoy and a school-turned-refugee shelter in the besieged Palestinian territory.

The remaining residents of Israel's northern settlement of Kiryat Shmona, those who have not fled rising cross-border fire from south Lebanon, have said that they are ready for whatever happens.

The Israel-Lebanon border has seen escalating tit-for-tat exchanges, mainly between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, since Palestinian militants of Hezbollah ally Hamas launched a shock attack on Israel on October 7, stoking fears of a wider regional conflict.