The Gaza Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike Tuesday hit a Gaza City hospital packed with wounded and other Palestinians seeking shelter, killing hundreds. If confirmed, the attack would be by far the deadliest Israeli airstrike in five wars fought since 2008.

Photos from al-Ahli Hospital showed fire engulfing the hospital halls, shattered glass and body parts scattered across the area. The ministry said at least 500 people had been killed.

For hours and hours, Moen Abu Aish digs through the rubble of demolished homes to find survivors of Israeli airstrikes, toiling in a vast and desperate search complicated by the shortage of critical supplies and the sheer scope of destruction across the Gaza Strip.

Even as rescue worker Abu Aish, 58, and his colleagues struggle to pry lifeless bodies from the concrete and twisted metal where residential towers once stood, the death toll keeps rising. Gaza's Health Ministry has reported that Israel's bombardment — launched after Hamas mounted an unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7 — has killed more than 2,700 Palestinians, many of them women and children.

Israel on Tuesday bombed areas of southern Gaza where it had told Palestinians to flee to ahead of an expected invasion, killing dozens of people. Meanwhile, mediators struggled to break a deadlock over delivering aid to millions of increasingly desperate civilians in the territory, which has been besieged and under assault by Israel since a brutal attack by Hamas militants.

Flaring violence along Israel's border with Lebanon also led to concerns over a widening regional conflict that diplomats were working to prevent.

Turkey's top diplomat said Tuesday that his country had been in touch with Hamas over some 200 Israeli and foreign hostages it is holding in Gaza, following requests from several governments.

"So far, we have received requests from various countries for the release of their citizens. As a result, we started to discuss these issues, especially with the political wing of Hamas," Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told a news conference in Beirut, alongside his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib.

Intense talks are on to free hostages held by Hamas after its attack on Israel, French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday, after the mother of a French-Israeli captive begged world leaders to intervene.

"I want to be very cautious here... so as not to endanger the intense talks we are currently conducting," Macron told reporters in the Albanian capital Tirana. "But they are progressing and we are following these talks hour by hour."

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Tuesday that "no one can stop" forces opposed to Israel if it keeps up its bombardment of Gaza in response to the surprise attack by Hamas.

The Islamic republic has maintained close contacts with its allies across the region since Hamas militants stormed across the Gaza border with Israel and killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday condemned Hamas for airing a video of a Franco-Israeli woman the Islamist militant group has taken hostage and demanded her unconditional release.

"It is an ignominy to take innocent people hostage and put them on show in this odious way," the Elysee presidential palace quoted Macron as saying.

President Joe Biden will travel to Israel and on to Jordan Wednesday to meet with both Israeli and Arab leadership, as concerns increase that the raging Israel-Hamas war could expand into a larger regional conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Biden's travel to Israel as the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip grows more dire and as Israel prepares for a possible ground attack on the 141-square-mile (365-square-kilometer) territory to root out Hamas militants responsible for what U.S. and Israeli officials say was the most lethal assault against Jews since the Holocaust.

The U.S. worked to break a deadlock over delivering aid to millions of increasingly desperate civilians in the Gaza Strip, which has been besieged and under assault by Israel since a brutal attack by Hamas militants, as U.S. President Joe Biden prepared to head to the region.

Israeli airstrikes continued to pound Gaza early Tuesday, killing dozens of people in the besieged enclave's south, where Israel told civilians from the north to seek shelter ahead of an expected ground offensive.

Palestinians described intense bombardments early Tuesday near two towns in southern Gaza, where Israel had ordered civilians to seek refuge.

Thousands of people trying to escape Gaza are gathered in Rafah, which has the territory's only border crossing to Egypt. Mediators are pressing for an agreement to let aid in and refugees with foreign passports out. The U.S. hoped to break a deadlock with President Joe Biden set to head to Israel and Jordan on Wednesday.