Deadly fighting and air strikes rocked besieged Gaza on Monday, a day after an attack that killed three US troops in Jordan heightened fears of a wider regional conflict.

Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip killed 140 people overnight, including 20 members of one family, said the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

The Israeli army, in its war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, said its troops had “encountered and killed dozens of armed terrorists in battles in central Gaza”.

Ground forces backed by tanks have focused combat operations on the coastal strip’s main southern city of Khan Yunis, the hometown of Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar.

The almost four-month-old war was sparked by the Hamas attack which resulted in about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, in southern Israel, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Source: AFP