Kindness,she said last week,could somehow save them.

“I grew up,you know,with all these Holocaust stories about how all my uncles’ lives were saved because” of acts of kindness,she said.

“Do I want that to be the story here?” she asked. “Yeah.”

Hamas apparently received nothing in exchange for the release of the two hostages,who were freed days after an American woman and her teenage daughter. Hamas and other militants in Gaza are believed to have taken roughly 220 people,including an unconfirmed number of foreigners and dual citizens.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas. Iranian-backed fighters around the region are warning of possible escalation,including the targeting of US forces deployed in the Middle East,if a ground offensive is launched in Gaza.

The US has told Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and other groups not to join the fight. Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire almost daily across the Israel-Lebanon border,and Israeli warplanes have struck targets in the occupied West Bank,Syria and Lebanon in recent days.

US national security council spokesman John Kirby said there has been an uptick in rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed militias on US troops in Iraq and Syria,and that the US was “deeply concerned about the possibility for any significant escalation” in the coming days.

He said US officials were having “active conversations” with Israeli counterparts about the potential ramifications of escalated military action.

The US advised Israeli officials that delaying a ground offensive would give Washington more time to work with regional mediators on the release of more hostages,according to a US official.

Israeli tanks and ground forces have been massed at the Gaza border,and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told troops there Monday to keep preparing for an offensive “because it will come.” He said it will be a combined offensive from air,land and sea,but he did not give a time frame.

A ground offensive is likely to dramatically increase casualties in what is already the deadliest by far of five wars fought between Israel and Hamas since the militant group took power in Gaza in 2007.

More than 1400 people in Israel have been killed — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack. At least 222 people were captured and dragged back to Gaza,including foreigners,the military said Monday,updating a previous figure.

More than 5000 Palestinians,including some 2000 minors and around 1100 women,have been killed,the Hamas-run Health Ministry said Monday. That includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week. The toll has climbed rapidly in recent days,with the ministry reporting 436 additional deaths in just the last 24 hours.

Israel said it struck 320 militant targets throughout Gaza over the last 24 hours. The military says it does not target civilians,and that Palestinian militants have fired over 7,000 rockets at Israel since the start of the war.

Inside Gaza,the civilian death toll continued to mount. Fifteen members of the same family were among at least 33 Palestinians buried Monday in a shallow,sandy mass grave at a Gaza hospital after being killed in Israeli airstrikes.

The bodies were laid to rest side by side in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Men discussed where to fit the shrouded corpse of a small child. “Bring them all,” a gravedigger called out.

Israel carried out limited ground forays into Gaza. On Sunday,Hamas said it destroyed an Israeli tank and two armoured bulldozers inside Gaza. The Israeli military said a soldier was killed and three others were wounded by an anti-tank missile during a raid inside Gaza.

On Monday,the Palestinian Red Crescent said 20 trucks entered Gaza carrying food,water,medicine and medical supplies through the Rafah crossing with Egypt,the only way into Gaza not controlled by Israel. It was the third delivery in as many days,each around the same size.

The aid coming in so far is “a drop in the ocean” compared with the needs of the population,said Thomas White,the Gaza director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees,UNRWA. The UN has said 20 trucks amounts to 4 per cent of an average day’s imports before the war and that hundreds of trucks a day are needed.

White said the agency had only three days of fuel left for its trucks. The supplies coming through Rafah are reloaded onto UNRWA vehicles and the Red Crescent trucks to take to hospitals and UN schools in the south of Gaza,where hundreds of thousands of people are taking shelter,running low on food and largely drinking contaminated water.

At least 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza have fled their homes,and nearly 580,000 of them are sheltering in UN-run schools and shelters,the UN said on Monday.

No aid will be distributed in Gaza City and other parts of the north,where hundreds of thousands of people remain. Gaza City’s main al-Shifa Hospital,with a normal capacity of 700 patients,is currently overwhelmed with 5000 patients,and around 45,000 displaced people are gathered in and around its grounds for shelter,the UN said.

AP

More coverage of the Hamas-Israel conflict

• Cascading violence:Tremors from the Hamas attacks and Israel’s response have reached far beyond the border. But what would all-outwar in the Middle East look like?
• The human cost: Hamas’ massacre in Israel has traumatised - and hardened - survivors. And in Gaza,neighbourhoods have become ghost cities.
• “Hamas metro”:Inside thelabyrinthine network of underground tunnels,which the Palestinian militant group has commanded beneath war-ravaged Gaza for 16 years. The covert corridors have long provided essential channels for the movement of weapons and armed combatants.
• What is Hezbollah?: As fears of the conflict expanding beyond Israel and Hamas steadily rise,all eyes are on the militant group and political party that controls southern Lebanon and has been designated internationally as a terrorist group.How did it form and what does Iran have to do with it?

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